The Dresden Files: Beneath Mt Ebott
by jgjemmett
Summary: The Monsters of Mt. Ebott were trapped underground at the end of a war in millennia past, and now that they've been freed, they're walking into another one. Amidst Monster abductions, time travel and a 12 year old in the United Nations, Harry Dresden's expertise as a Wizard is required to help educate them on the workings of the modern magical world. (Dead Beat/Post Barrier)
1. Prologue - Can't I Get a Day Off?

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Lately, everyone has been conjuring it at every available opportunity.

"Mr. Dresden, over here!"

"Jeez, one at a time, please!"

Mt. Ebott, or the Alpine Mountain in Wisconsin, turned out to be both hollow and way deeper than people thought not too long ago. And it was filled to the brim with monsters.

"Mr. Dresden, what is your take on the monster situation and how it pertains to your normal line of work?"

"What, the one where I'm a detective? Hey, stop shoving already!"

Thankfully, none of them have turned out to be violent just yet, but rumors say it's been a close thing a few times. What scares the hell out of the wizards of today, what scared the hell out of the wizards back then? These monsters have souls of their own. That's a Big Fucking Deal, capital letters intended.

"Mr. Dresden, why do you believe that magic has such a negative impact on technology when you use it but has no ill effects when the monsters use it?"

"Could be that their tech is more advanced than ours, and other things go wrong around them, or maybe it's because they're supposedly made of magic, so maybe they control it better. I'm kind of a rough hand with delicate equipment, so stop shoving those microphones in my face or they're going to fry! Seriously!"

It gets worse. If a monster is there when a human dies, they can take a human's soul. That's worth repeating: your immortal soul, locked in a monster, used as a power source like a car battery or something, for potentially hundreds or thousands of years. I heard some of the White Council's first thoughts on the matter involved the magical equivalent of leveling Wisconsin, but those got shot down pretty quickly. Sad thing is, the Vatican might support it if they weren't so busy denying the monster's ability in the first place. A friend of mine, Michael Carpenter, has been on the fence between praying for their own souls and wanting to help defend them, and preparing to recover any Christian souls that might be taken. Or maybe just any souls at all, he's not the kind to discriminate.

"Mr. Dresden- no, Jeff, get the camera over- Mr. Dresden, did you just blow out my camera?!"

"For the last freakin' time, PENS AND PAPER, PEOPLE! When emotions run high... get them further back and let me set a goddamn circle! Move back!"

Meanwhile, my name got out as one of the real ones. See, I've known magic is real almost my whole life. Comes with being a Wizard, a Magi, one of the wise. Given time to prepare, we are some of the most tenacious and unbeatable people on the planet, bar none. I'm listed in the phone book under 'Wizards,' and I'm the only one there. Until now, the powers that be, whether they're the people running the government or just the ones out to make my life a living hell, have kept me from being taken seriously on the subject of magic on T.V. or even just in general. That changed when a kid walked out of Mt. Ebott with the monsters, an orphan like me, and he or she (nobody knows for sure) told the story of how human wizards locked the door behind them. Seven of them, in fact, and with a magical barrier designed to only be unlocked with seven more wizards or a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. Or maybe ten bombs. Long story short, it's harder to hide monsters from the world when they're asking for a seat on the U.N. for a twelve year old kid.

So. Magic is real. Wizards are real. And here one is, actually advertising in a phone book, and hits all the checkboxes for being the real deal according to the several thousand year old monster royalty.

Cue an endless stream of reporters who want a professional opinion from one of the 'Wise' on current events. And let me tell you, balancing what I can and can't say about the details of magic to a bunch of vanilla mortals so that I don't inadvertently kick-start World War 3, the one for all the marbles, takes a damned toll on my patience.

Cut to me, now, taking a piece of chalk out of my pocket to draw a perfect circle around me on the pavement. I was walking to Burger King when the newest swarm descended on me. Jerks.

I let a whisper of will out into the circle, and the energy of the rabid crowd died out instantly. I breathed a sigh of relief, closing my eyes to count to ten.

And then some jackass put a microphone past my fucking barrier, blowing through it like it wasn't there, and the energy spiked around me again.

Three shoulder cameras exploded and everyone wearing an earpiece winced and yanked it out.

"NO MEANS NO! DO NOT PASS THE LINE, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PUSHING ANYTHING OVER THE LINE, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT INFORMATION YOU CAN'T GET ANYWHERE ELSE!" I finally snapped out, shouting over the crowd, and for a few blissful seconds, everyone just stood there, waiting. The microphone that had been shoved into my face hadn't quite burst into flames, but the reporter somehow managed to rub two brain cells together long enough to realize that it was broken, and probably had been since I'd been swarmed.

I took a breath, touched the circle with my foot and a whisper of willpower, and sighed as the invisible barrier jumped back up again.

One, two, three, four, five...

I finished counting to ten and opened my eyes. The reporters, thankfully, had stopped asking questions, waiting now for whatever I was going to follow up with. Now I may be a smartass, but sometimes you have to use small words to beat it into some people's heads, so that's what I decided to try.

"Now," I exhaled again, "the chalk circle, with a touch of will, should stop your equipment from going completely haywire, but only if you stay on your side of the line. So to the guys in the back who have done this before, feel free to turn your cameras on now."

I waited a moment as two of the local news crews who had done this song and dance at least twice now got their cameras rolling. One sweaty, hairy camera man pushed his way forward and actually set up a microphone stand with a boom mic attached to it just in front of my circle, and I stared at it. Huh. They were adapting. That was somewhere between comforting and terrifying.

I cleared my throat.

"So. Yeah." I swallowed again. Not much of a public speaker. "Everybody keeps coming down to find out whether I'm the real deal. So I'll tell you what I tell all my clients:" I waved my arms open, careful to keep them in the circle, "try me.

"Now, I heard from a few friends what kind of questions to expect given the Monsters' plans to try to build homes outside of their mountain. I'll try to answer them as simply as I can, by ignoring most of them. Until I personally meet these monsters, and by that I mean most of them, I can't tell you much more than you'd probably figure out for yourselves. I can take a guess, though, based on some of the things I've met over the years that go bump in the night."

I had a cruel thought, and smiled inwardly.

"The Special Investigations branch of the Chicago Police Department has dealt with numerous monsters and extra-human beings, so the boys in blue might be able to expand on what I say today."

Heh. Good luck with that, guys. Maybe they might get a budget big enough to hire me as a consultant more, eh?

"There are a lot of different monsters out in the world, not just the ones we've met coming out of the ground recently. I've met some seriously nasty customers hiding behind charming smiles, and some true friends that looked like they belonged in a bad Saturday night horror flick. What I'm trying to say is, we can't judge these new monsters, good or bad, until we meet them. And I don't mean one or two, and I don't mean just a couple officials in press meetings.

"I mean the guys who bag groceries or sell hot dogs on the street. Maybe they'll get a great deal in California, or up in Canada, or some other place forgiving of any differences, where they try to embrace them like new styles, or whatever. Maybe a couple people are jerks, hey, that's life. I expect they'll have jerks just like we do. But places like New York, like here in Chicago, the news'll pass and we'll probably treat them like anyone else, because that's what a bunch of us do. It doesn't matter you've got claws and are seven feet tall, because the guy selling hot dogs has to put his kids through school. And if you break the law, Special Investigations is going to book you, and they'll probably figure out how to make a holding cell to keep you there, magic or otherwise.

"Me? I got a feeling this is all going to blow over way sooner than a bunch of people think it is. Yeah, monsters and magic are real. Vampires and werewolves are real, too, and some of you may remember Karrin Murphy killing a particularly dangerous one a while back. A few of my friends are even werewolves, a nice bunch of kids, growing up too fast.

"That's the world we live in. There are a lot of strange things, but we'll turn up our coats and keep moving, at least here in Chicago. I hope most of them are nice people. Can't know unless I meet them. If they aren't, then..."

I set my jaw.

"Then some of us won't seem so nice either."

I waited a moment, then sighed again, trying to slacken my face, make it look calm again.

"Now I don't know about you, but I'm going to Burger King. If I meet any monsters there, I expect we'll both mind our own business unless somebody starts a fight." I shrugged. "Either way, I'll be on the side of the guy who didn't start it. Good luck with the whole reporting thing, and if anybody wants an interview, I charge by the hour. You can find my number in the phone book, but at this point my answering machine is probably fried. Send me a letter at my office or something."

I looked down at the boom mic pointedly, and the sweaty tech guy rushed to pull it away. The cameras at the back were quickly shut off.

"Have a nice day."

I turned and walked through my circle away from the crowd, ignoring the shouted questions at my back.

Humanity finally admitted that monsters and magic were real again. Heh. I couldn't begin to imagine how much that could change.

I expected one hell of a busy season coming up.


	2. A Headache in the Morning

There was a painful haze over everything, and I couldn't bring my eyes to focus. I was lying down, and a few moments of agony later I realized my eyes weren't open. I couldn't feel anything, the sensations drowned out by the worst hangover I'd ever experienced.

I tried to move my arms, to push myself up or to move, but I was still paralyzed from the fading empty dreams. My heart started to pound blood into my head, feeling two sizes too big, and I tried to focus some kind of magic together to force myself to _move_!

It didn't work. I struggled for at least a minute, until finally something gave and I inched over the side of the bed, falling onto the floor.

I blinked, forcing my eyes open. I was still on my bed, head still pounding. I breathed harder, until all at once the sensation passed and I shoved myself into a sitting position. Which, in hindsight, maybe wasn't the best idea.

"Argh…" I winced, cradling my head in my hands. Some small part of my mind pointed out that my mouth didn't taste like crap, so this likely wasn't a hangover caused by alcohol. Still dazed, I stumbled out of bed onto the floor, then up and into my little shower, fumbling with the knobs until the ice cold water shot out of the pipes onto my head. I forced myself to stand there as the sensations faded into numbness, and then a slight pain from the temperature. It didn't matter as much as getting my head clear; I stayed in the shower for a few more minutes until I could think clearly.

I tried to think back to yesterday, but… there was nothing there. Nothing at all.

I took a shuddering breath around the water, spraying onto my face. Further back?

...Nothing.

I glanced at my left hand, swallowing. The angry red and black flesh of my charred left hand, courtesy of a run in with a flamethrower I'd had some time ago trying to take down a black court vampire, refused to move when I tried to wiggle my fingers. A small circle with a vaguely hourglass-shaped symbol in the middle of my palm was uninjured pink flesh from where I'd touched the coin of a fallen angel.

I got out of the shower and toweled off, getting dressed as quickly as my shaking hand could handle, a leather glove over my burned left hand. I stepped into the main room of my basement apartment, and with a whisper of "flickum bicus," candles burst into life, revealing my roommates scattered around the couch. I dropped into a scowl at the scene: Mister, my -cough- year old half-tiger of a cat was licking a dropped beer bottle next to my Tibbetten Foo Mastiff, Mouse, who was lazing out on the couch with my half-brother Thomas' legs draped over him. A beer-stained blanket hung down over the couch's edge, not covering much of anything. I loved my roommates, but the rest of the room reminded me that both love and hate are powerful emotions, and you can get them confused sometimes.

Beer bottles were scattered over my apartment's many hodgepodge rugs, and I muttered bloody murder as I stumbled over them to the room's fireplace, throwing in a few logs and kindling and bringing them to burn with another "flickum bicus." It's a handy little spell for small, controlled flames, and one I've practiced every day given my tendency to blow lightbulbs out within a few days at most if I ever bothered to try using them. That was also the reason for the cold shower; I'm not willing to risk blowing up a water heater and killing my upstairs neighbors for a little comfort in the morning.

I didn't bother picking up any of the bottles as I made my way to the kitchenette in the corner to have breakfast. The dog and cat food bowls had been dumped out, somehow, but there are a thousand other little messes around the room not worth mentioning; I added it to the List. I opened the cupboard and scowled at the expected sight: we still had another six boxes of fruit loops from the last time my cleaning service went shopping and bought literally nothing else. I shut the cupboard and made my way to the ice chest (cooled with real ice!), taking a deep breath before opening it.

I lifted the lid, and fought down an urge to scream.

I'd just bought a case of microbrew from the gods, beer made from not-quite-literal ambrosia at McAnally's Pub, and there wasn't a single bottle left.

So. To summarize. I woke up feeling like hell before my Mickey Mouse alarm clock went off, had a cold shower until my head stopped spinning (barely), and added the mess of my house (and the food bowls) to not having anything worth eating for breakfast. All of that, every single thing, could have passed by and I'd have just been aggravated. But this? This could not stand.

"THOMAS!" I thundered, slamming the ice chest closed. "You drank an entire case of beer and didn't leave a single one for me?!"

My brother lazily opened his eyes, and stretched, rubbing the back of his head, causing his hair to fall gently into place, white muscled chest heaving in a way that might make girls swoon. There's a different kind of hate I have for my brother's ability to wake up looking like he'd just gotten a makeover, but a small part of the back of my mind noted for later reference that alcohol didn't seem to have an effect on the supernatural ability. And it was supernatural.

My brother is half vampire, but not the blood-sucking kind. No, his kind just has sex with you until you die of pleasure, and they eat those emotions as you do. The perks include drawing the eyes of everyone with a libido, giving him supernatural strength and speed, and the inability to touch anyone under the effects of "true love" without suffering from serious pain.

None of that mattered to me as I crossed my arms and tried to ignore my head's renewed ache at shouting. I may not have had an alcoholic hangover, but I sure as hell had some kind of migraine.

"Good morning, Harry. Not feeling fruit loops again this morning?" He snarked, scratching at Mouse's floppy grey ears. I fought the urge to grind my teeth.

"A case of Mac's brew, Thomas. Last I checked, it's corpse is getting licked by Mister on the floor."

Thomas furrowed his brow and looked down at the cat, who looked back without blinking. A moment or two passed in silence, then Mister deemed the situation beneath him and wandered over to my bookshelf on the wall, jumping up it to nap on the well-worn spines. Thomas shrugged it off and stood to stretch some more.

I took a deep breath to rant at him, but the phone rang, and I let it out in a breath. "You're not off the hook," I said, pointing a finger at Thomas, then tripped over a bottle as I tried to answer the old rotary phone, cursing as I managed not to fall to the floor again. Thomas took the opportunity to head past my bedroom to have a shower of his own.

"Good morning, Dresden speaking," I forced through grit teeth, forcing myself to be polite; last time I'd answered the phone pissed off, the recorded soundbyte had made local news.

"Ah, good morning," a deep, possibly-friendly voice responded. "It seems I have only a little time to speak, and am interested in meeting with you directly. You would be paid for your services to teach me as much as you can this morning about the White Council. Are you available?"

I blinked a few times, surprised. Despite the media declaring me 'one of the real ones,' I'd been bouncing between real jobs, short interviews and crank calls enough to pay rent on time this month, but nobody in the know had asked me for anything like that. "I might need some time to compile a report," I stalled, grabbing the notepad and pen I kept next to the phone. "You sure you want to meet this morning? I might not have much ready."

I heard the message relayed to somebody on the other end of the phone, and then, "That would be fine," he responded ponderously. "We can discuss terms, payment, and what we would like to know at this morning's meeting, if you're free."

I shook my head, but asked, "Where and when? For something like this I think somewhere public might be a good start."

"Ah, of course," the voice responded, slightly surprised. "Actually, I was hoping you could join me at the Burger King you prefer to frequent. Are you busy now?"

This felt like a bad idea. But I had to know more, especially if somebody was getting ready to start something in my city. "No. How will I know it's you?"

He chuckled. "I will be the seven foot tall monster wearing a Burger King crown. I look forward to meeting you soon."

He hung up the phone, and I stared at it.

I ran over to the corner of the room and threw a rug out of the way, then lifted the trapdoor to the sub basement and my wizard's laboratory, rushing inside.


	3. Meeting the King

"Bob!" I called down, careful not to trip down the stairs, notepad in hand. My lab was clutter built on more clutter, with the numerous shelves up the walls filled with various spell components and knick knacks, several of which would be considered highly suspicious or even illegal to own by anybody snooping around. In a lead box on one wall was a bit of depleted uranium, and next to that box sat a tiger's scrotum (don't ask). These shelves and substances circled the room around a center island where most of my work was done, and most of the table space was cluttered there as well. In the entire room, only two spots could really be considered uncluttered, and I looked at the first on a shelf on the wall.

A bleached white human skull with various inscriptions and designs etched into the bone sat in front of an open romance novel between two mounds of wax that might have once been considered candles, and several more novels were stacked next to it. The skull's eye sockets flashed to life with an orange glow, and the novel turned a page.

"What're you doing up so early?" the skull I've named Bob asked, feigning disinterest. "Finally ready to discuss all the women you've neglected in your life?"

"Bob. Focus," I said. "I need everything you've got on the new monsters, and I need it now."

"Oooh, what's got your panties in a twist this morning?" Bob asked, but he closed the book with a snap and leered at me. "Human women don't catch your fancy, so-"

"Bob!" I cut him off. "I have an appointment with a monster who wants everything I have on the White Council. What do I need to be prepared with?"

"Huh," Bob said, curious. "The new ones with proto souls, right?"

I marked down "proto souls" on the pad, and said, "Yeah, the ones from Wisconsin."

"Hmm… I've got nothing," Bob said, unconcerned.

"Wh- nothing?" I asked. "Give me something here, Bob. What do you mean, Proto Souls?"

Bob's skull seemed to turn left and right slightly. "I'm running out of novels."

"Two new ones, your choice of author, and if you hurry up and answer me I won't take a claw hammer to your skull and take my chances without you."

"Jeez, boss. Kinda harsh this morning?"

I forced myself to take a breath, then reached for the hammer I'd left sitting nearby for just such an occasion but Bob cut me off with an "alright already!" and continued.

"Proto souls, yeah, made out of magic," he hurried to say, then muttered something about wizards not being morning people. I had to drop the hammer to take more notes, but when he got going it wouldn't take much to drag him back on topic. "From what you've had me researching, it looks like these monsters can't handle a ton of human food or physical altercations, because they're made out of magical, well, dust. It's kind of like ectoplasm from the Nevernever," he clarified, "so when the magic powering it falls apart, so do they.

"Don't think they're pushovers, though," Bob warned. "What they lack in density they make up for it magical ability; if they aren't careful, they can easily bleed off magic and hurt regular people and monsters without meaning to. 'Course, it goes both ways, too. If you do have to fight one, all that hate you're loaded with this morning should be enough to kill a weak monster by accident if you happen to bump into one."

I narrowed my eyes, but let it pass; I'd get my mood handled on my way to the Burger King. "And their souls?" I pressed.

Bob took a moment too long, and I tapped the pen on the paper a few times to hurry him along. Finally, he said, "I don't trust what I know on the subject. Everything that isn't a closely guarded secret is conjecture, and a lot of that contradicts itself. Other than that, I don't know anything useful yet."

I shook my head. "Fine. But they're safe to meet in public?"

"Far as I can tell, yeah," Bob's skull nodded, clattering on the shelf. "Public knowledge says they're scared of another war like the one that trapped them under a mountain in the first place, and most are civilians anyway. Just keep an eye out, alright boss? Asking about the White Council sounds like they've had a run in and I don't have to tell you that could mean really bad news."

No, he didn't. I left my lab and threw the rugs back over it, and took one last look over the mess of my home. Mouse barked, wagging his tail, and took the beer-blanket in his mouth. He quickly dragged it along the ground as he ran to the door and then back to me, the blanket pushing the bottles out of the way so I had a clear path to walk. I smiled despite myself and scratched behind his ears. "Good dog."

With my path clear and Thomas still in the shower, there was little to do here at home. I grabbed my leather duster from the wall beside the door, and took my staff in hand, then opened the steel door and hurried up the stairs to my car.

The Blue Beetle hasn't been just blue in years, but is more a mishmash of different parts from the numerous repairs I've put it through to keep it alive. Mike, my mechanic, is some kind of technical genius and can keep it running through my wizardly troubles nine days out of ten. The hood is grey primer from a run in with a chlorofiend I had last summer, and the doors are all kinds of primary colors. I tossed my wizard's staff into the back seat and sat uncomfortably in the bucket seat I had install after a run in with some mold demons; they ate most of the seats.

It's a long story.

I managed to steal a parking spot in the Burger King's parking lot just after car drove off, and I headed inside, ignoring other motorists cussing at me for taking "their" spot.

Inside, I followed the gazes of most of the room to a table in the back, where a large, fluffy creature wearing a button down hawaiian shirt was sitting. Atop his head, between two short horns, was a golden Burger King crown.

I took a deep breath, smiled, and walked over.

He noticed me immediately and stood up with a smile of his own, standing just a bit taller than my own six and a half foot height. Where I've been told I'm lanky, made of legs and elbows, he's got a Santa Claus figure if Santa lost just a few pounds.

"Dresden?" He asked softly, the same deep voice from the phone. "I am Asgore. It is a pleasure to meet you."

I kept from stumbling, but only just. "You too, Asgore. Harry Dresden, at your service," I introduced myself to the King under the Mountain. "Nice crown."

He chuckled. "I find it nice to step away from my duties and to laugh at myself when I can. Come, sit, I have already ordered your famous Whopper for each of us, and a cup of coffee will be brought for you now that you're here."

Normally I don't care about titles or treating royalty different, but it would have been nice to know I was about to sit down with a King. In the magical world, most of the time you don't get to be a King or Queen just sitting around studying politics. In the Nevernever, a kind of spirit world way bigger than the Earth, you get usually only get a title because you're the strongest of your kind. I hoped that wasn't the case with Fluffy here. Still, he wore a paper crown, and those are just the best.

Speaking of, I saw a second one on the table.

We sat down, my staff leaned against the table, and I wasted no time.

"Who's the second crown for?"

The king looked at it a moment, then admitted, "I wasn't sure a single one would fit my head, but still wished to have one prepared when you arrived, so you would know it was me."

I nodded, then hooked the paper together and put the second crown on as our burgers were brought out. Asgore smiled wider as I put the crown on. I blew on the coffee and drank the whole cup.

"So," I said, unwrapping my Whopper carefully with my good hand. "You wanted information on the White Council? What brought that on?"

His smile faded. "A… an ally of mine has insisted that we learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. I fear that this White Council may wish to trap us back underground."

I took a bite of my Whopper to cover my swallow. I'd heard rumors from the few people I know with inside information on the Council, and yeah, that actually was one of the plans that got shot down, alongside the crazy one to wipe them out while we still could.

"That's definitely something I could ask around about," I offered between bites. "You just made it sound like you wanted more general information when you called a little bit ago."

He nodded. "Yes, that was why I asked you here. I don't know what I don't know about these new wizards, but I know from before the war that humans do not trust anything that they do not know. I hope to learn about them, and then to teach them about my people in turn. But for now," he insisted, "I must know my people are safe, and for that, I must know what laws the wizards have beyond those of common humans."

"I can understand that," I said, checking my empty coffee cup, then set it down. "You said there was a war?"

"It led to my people's imprisonment underground," he said quietly.

Ah. That war.

"...I'll see what I can prepare," I finally said. "What do you already know?"

"Next to nothing. I barely knew they existed before this morning, and even now I don't know what questions to ask. For your help, I can offer you fifty Gee, and would hope for a report within the next few days."

"What's 'Gee?'" I asked.

Instead of answering me, he took a small, golden coin out of his pocket. He slid it across the table, and I picked it up carefully.

"This is one Gee, my people's currency. Apparently, the exchange rate is highly favorable; with one gram of gold in each coin, and a little more than forty dollars to the gram, I believe I am offering close to two thousand dollars for your help."

Wow. Not bad for a quick report, all told. It wasn't like the White Council had done me any favors over the years, and if all they wanted to know was the basics...

I looked over the coin at my new probable client, then slid it back across the table to him. "Sounds more than fair to me. Half up front, half on completion? And I can list off the laws for you now without going into detail on the White Council's specifics."

Asgore stacked twenty four more of the coins on the table in little sets of five and passed them over. "By all means, list them."

I nodded, glancing around the restaurant for anybody watching me take his money; while people were avoiding looking directly at us, they didn't seem to see the exchange itself. I pocketed the gold.

"Alright, there are seven Laws of Magic, and for now let's just assume they apply to both of us, though they're mostly intended for humans," I said, taking out my pad of paper to write each down as I listed them. "First up, do not kill with magic. Second, don't use magic to change another's shape. Third, do not enter another's mind for any reason. Fourth, don't take over another person's mind, or change it magically. Fifth, do not practice necromancy, or controlling or raising the dead. Sixth, don't mess with time or try to go back in time. Seventh, don't ever try to find out more about outsiders. Ever."

I finished writing out the list, and tore the page off to give to the King. He slowly raised his hand to take it, then read through it a few times, silent. The restaurant's background noise and conversations seemed louder without us talking, and finally Asgore folded the paper and put it into his pocket.

"Thank you very much for this list of laws, Mr. Dresden," he said, and he sounded really subdued to me. "May I ask what the penalty for breaking these laws is?"

I sighed. "Again, these are primarily aimed at other humans, but the White Council usually executes anyone who breaks them," I said, and he gasped. I pressed on. "There are a few ways to get it moved down to a serious parole, but that's really rare. If you know anyone who broke any of these, your best bet is to tell them stop while they still can. The White Council aren't the forgiving type."

"I… I will do so," He said softly, bowing his head. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Dresden." He took another paper out of his pocket, and gave it to me. "My number, for when you can tell us more."

I nodded, then got up and left.

I needed to know more about these monsters.


	4. Ebb and Flow

When I need information, there are a ton of different people I can ask.

Bob, a spirit of intellect, is my first go-to choice, and is a general expert on all things magical. He also knows general and specific facts about just about everything, and can usually learn what he doesn't know in a day or two spent piggybacking on the 30 pounds of muscle I call my cat, using Mister as a living shield for his spiritual form. He's taught me most of what I know about the obscure and otherwise unknowable things that go bump in the night and, other than my mentor Ebenezar McCoy, more about magic in general than anyone else. If knowledge were power, then I believe Bob could throw down against some of the strongest casters on the planet.

When Bob doesn't know something and it's way out of my jurisdiction, there are two books full of rituals that I can use to ask around about obscure, thousand year old facts nobody else bothered to remember. I normally only use the first. Sometimes, while traveling abroad, I can use more generalized rituals to draw in any willing local spirits to get a lowdown on magical weirdness in the area they inhabit. More often than not, I can offer tea, milk, or in some cases, McDonalds or Burger King meals in exchange for enough information to get me back on track.

My second book of rituals focuses primarily on summoning creatures who ask for a lot more than any sane person should trade, and I stopped using it after I almost lost my soul to a demon.

For more localized research, especially in Chicago, I can usually ask the Little Folk for help.

I drove myself to a local donut shop that my friend Murphy and her police buddies tell me has nice coffee, and I bought a couple donuts and another cup of black steaming liquid joy. Rather than get back in my car, I walked down the street a ways and turned off into an empty alley, then took a moment and made sure I was alone. I didn't see anyone, so set my bag of donuts and coffee down on the ground and took out a piece of chalk to draw a quick-but-perfect circle. I checked it twice, just to be sure it didn't have any flaws, then turned and found myself eye to point with a huge sword.

I blinked, and found myself slammed up against the alley wall with the blade at my throat.

"Dresden," a rough, graveled voice growled into my face. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't cut your head off right now."

"Morgan?" I asked the White Council Warden carefully, trying not to flinch. "What are you even doing here? Whatever it was, I didn't do it. I'm not under the Doom anymore, and last I checked you weren't supposed to threaten me every time you decided Chicago was looking nice this time of year."

The Doom of Damocles. I'd broken one of the Laws of Magic when I was a teenager, Thou Shalt Not Kill With Magic, and only the offer of a Senior Council member of the White Council taking me under his wing turned it from "off with his head!" into magical parole. If I'd broken a single law after that, no matter how small the charge, then there wouldn't have been a trial so much as a witch hunt. Except I wasn't under the Doom anymore; I'd been cleared of wrongdoing by virtue of self defense years ago.

Morgan growled rather than answered me, and the sword was pressed close enough to make it hard to breathe. He didn't draw any blood, but if I swallowed that would change. I'd think it was a neat trick if it wasn't my neck the sword was against.

"Why don't we put the sword down and talk this out like civilized people? Y'know, pretend we don't hate each other and that you're an upstanding citizen who doesn't cut people's heads off because they breathe funny?"

The muscled old man, still strong as a spring chicken that hadn't been on the job longer than a century, held me there for a few moments more, then slowly backed up and let his sword fall to his side. Not that I didn't think he'd hesitate kill me if I made any sudden movements, or that I could stop him if he tried; the broadsword he carried was made special by the White Council for their Wardens, the magic secret police, and it cuts through and destroys magic effortlessly. My preferred magical shield wouldn't even slow it down before Morgan could cut me in half.

He's also one of the strongest casters of earth magic on the planet, so there's that, too.

"There have been signs of change in the flow of time, and it has spooled and gotten stuck here in Chicago," Morgan stated clearly. "Naturally, I thought of the only person in the area who has already broken the Laws. The Council may have cleared you of wrongdoing, but it'll be a hot day in Arctis Tor before you regain the people's trust."

"Time? Somebody's messing with _time_?" I asked, then pointed at myself, "And you think _I_ could pull that off?!"

Morgan paused, then narrowed his eyes. "I have not lived this long underestimating the ingenuity of warlocks seeking power. ...But I see your point."

He sheathed his sword, but again, you don't become the Wardens' second in command without learning to kill somebody without it. I wouldn't feel safe until the large, old, battle-hardened warrior in his calf-length grey cloak was long gone, hopefully back to the other side of the world. Meanwhile, my mind was racing, trying to think of who might have messed with time's flow.

To sum it up in a sentence, altering time is some of the most delicate magic on the planet, next to mental manipulation and some kinds of healing. There are a hundred ways I don't even understand the process myself, but it wouldn't matter if I _did_ know; I'm the magical equivalent of a brawler, and something as big as time travel or anything like it was so far beyond me that I was surprised Morgan had thought of me at all. It was almost a compliment, in a backhanded kind of way.

And it meant somebody strong and careful was causing trouble in my favorite city. It was almost enough to set aside my life-long fight with Morgan. Almost.

"So," I began, folding my arms. "The flow of time?" I prompted. "You didn't run me down and threaten to kill me just to walk away after saying something like that, did you?"

"I'm not here to kill you for breaking the laws, Dresden, but neither do I trust you've had nothing to do with the crimes I've come here to stop." His ever-present scowl deepened. "There are signs of time moving slowly in Chicago, and there is enough residue to hide short jumps backward. We cannot risk those responsible learning that we know, or we might lose what few advantages we have in knowing.

"Watch your back, Dresden," He spat, "because I doubt you would survive a fight against a foe who knows what you'll do before you do."

"Are… are you warning me? Or... _warning_ me?" I asked, confused.

"Both," he said shortly. "As you said, you have a tendency to get involved in everything in Chicago. Something is coming, soon. You may not trust us and we may not trust you, but the Wardens live to protect the laws, no matter who reports when they're broken. You _will_ call us when you find out more, and you won't breathe a word of this to anyone without asking first."

And just like that, he left. Just turned and walked away, down the alley until he turned out of sight.

Morgan doesn't like me, doesn't trust me, and wouldn't offer a kind word if it meant saving a bag of puppies and kittens. Something was wrong, and anything that had Morgan telling me about threats is something to worry more than usual about. More so if he was pulled from the front lines of the war the White Council is having with the Red Court to threaten me over it.

A thought struck me. If he thought I had something to do with it, why mention it at all if it needed to be kept so secret? Was I going to be watched? Or… was I already?

I looked down at where I'd left my coffee and donuts, and clenched my good fist a few times at the crushed bag and spilled caffeine. Great. My offering had a boot print in it.

I wasn't going to offer my preferred contact among the Wee Folk, a sprite I call Toot Toot, a subpar gift for his help, especially not now. I don't like to offer insult to anyone I'm trying to get a favor from (not more than twice or three times, anyway), and that goes double for informants as valuable as Toot Toot had been. Keeping an eye over my shoulder, I ran to my car and almost caused a few accidents driving home.

I kept my eyes moving as I pulled up to my apartment building, then hurried down the stairs to my basement home and inside, mindful of my home's magical wards. I slammed the door shut behind me before Mister could run out, and he spat at me and stalked back into some darkened corner of the room.

Thomas had changed into a Burger King polo shirt and pants (and I took a moment to be _so proud of him_ for his choice of part time job), and was going over some kind of paperwork from the couch. Judging by the mess of beer bottles still littering the room, it looked like he still hadn't taken Mouse for a walk since I'd left. "Something wrong?" he asked.

I frowned. "Plenty. When do you work today? I could use some backup when you're free."


	5. Questions Not To Answer

Thomas started work in just a few minutes, but he let me know he'd be available to help watch my back after he got off later that night. I thanked him, then told him he owed me a new case of beer when he got his first paycheck; turns out that's why he was doing paperwork, setting up a bank account to get the money put into. Seeing as he doesn't pay rent, feed the pets or even clean up his own messes, he agreed to pick up some of Mac's finest on his way home. It was the least he could do.

Mister shot past him when he opened the door, off to go take care of whatever business cats have during the daylight hours outside. I heaved a sigh. I'd needed Mister for something today.

With Thomas out of the way, I grabbed Mouse's lead and a little baggie to take him for a walk before he unleashed the flood waters all over my floor, and the alert mountain of a dog kept his own nose and ears at the ready as we took a quick jog around the block. He's smart enough to know when he needs to do his business quickly, and I made a mental note that it was time to move up from small baggies to big ones. And I've been told that the dog, despite coming up to my belt, isn't done growing. Maybe not by half.

We hadn't been out very long, but apparently long enough. When I opened the door to my apartment again, it was sparkling clean.

The pets' food dishes had been filled and watered, the floor scrubbed and the empty bottles all taken off to god knows where. Thank goodness; it'd been too long since Thomas and I had both been out of the house at the same time, and my cleaning service doesn't work with an audience. Nor will they ever come back if I ever tell anyone about them, so Thomas has taken to calling me insulting names whenever I wave my hands and call it magic. I don't mind. I just want my house to stay clean, and he has a dozen habits that keep that from happening.

Given that all I really need is for him to be out of the house for ten or twenty minutes to walk the dog or grab some lunch, it shouldn't be that freakin' hard to do. And yet, being the slob of a brother that he is, it's still apparently too much to ask most days. You'd think that seeing the house clean wouldn't piss me off, but it put this morning's mess into a greater perspective. I have a magical fairy cleaning service, and my place is _still_ always a pig sty.

I swallowed down several muttered obscenities at my brother's expense and made my way back down into the lab, where Bob was waiting. Or rather, reading a book.

"TAKE HER SHIRT OFF!" Bob shouted into the pages enthusiastically, then quickly turned a page. A moment later, he laughed, yelled and cat called at his romance novel.

"Bob," I interrupted, and he narrowed his glowing eye sockets at me, closing the book. "I need to pick your brain."

"Can't it wait five more minutes?" he whined. "I'm at the best part!"

"All I'm hearing is, 'No, boss, I don't need any more romance novels. Don't ever buy me those again.'"

His face fell. Given that he's a human skull made of immovable bone, I was impressed that he'd pulled that off. "Don't even joke about that, man."

I had my notepad back out. It's not something I carry everywhere, but it goes far when I remember it. I didn't pull out a pencil yet. There were a few things to clear up first.

"Bob, I have questions and I need answers. I may even need to send you out tonight to find out more, but first I need your perspective on everything going on."

I had his attention, and he put away his pouty face. "A ramble with Mister, eh? ...48 hours, minimum. And don't think I've forgotten about the two novels you owe me from earlier!"

I frowned. The last time I'd given him too much leash, he'd started an orgy at the local college. "Twelve, tops. It's time sensitive. Literally."

"I don't think you know what literally means, boss," he scoffed. Then he paused. Then he eyed me with those orange lights in his sockets again. "Well now… that's interesting, isn't it?"

"That's not what I'm asking you to go out looking for, but it's something I'd like to hear about if you see it in passing," I said, and realized I was rubbing my neck. I swallowed. "I need more on these new monsters. They want a basic rundown of the White Council, supposedly so they can make friends and play nice. Their King, though," I thought back, "he acted weird when I mentioned the laws. I get the feeling he knows somebody who broke them, and it might even be him."

Bob scoffed. "The laws normally only apply to humans, anyway. If they want information, I say go for it. Tell these new guys whatever you want about the White Council. The Council never did _us_ any favors. I want twenty four hours."

I started looking around the ingredients lining the shelves, walls, and cluttered floor while we talked. The cleaning services didn't do much down here, probably because they knew better. It's a wizard's workshop, after all, with several dangerous things they wouldn't understand laying around, or… in one case, held in concrete under the floor.

I paused for a moment, looking at the one part of the floor that I never, ever let get dirty: a triple-layered circle made of silver with various runes of protection, custom made by a specialized fairy smith, was set into the ground. I found myself trying to squeeze my left hand into a fist, then swallowed and looked away, back to a small plastic shelving unit I got on sale, now full of odds and ends.

I pulled down some old coffee grounds as I asked, "Anything you think I should hold back from these new guys?"

"Don't bother with too many boring details, just give them the basics," Bob advised, eyeing my movements around the cramped room. "Are you making another Pick Me Up potion?"

I nodded, reaching for fresh soap. "I'm hoping we can do a little better than the super coffee we made a few years back. The energy was fantastic, but the crash almost got me killed. If we can't do a night's rest, I'll take a twenty minute nap."

He sighed. "Don't bother starting with coffee, then. Open with milk."

I paused. "I think we're out of milk. Let me go check."

As it turned out, we _did_ have milk. My cleaning service had picked more up to go with the dozen or two boxes of Fruit Loops they'd bought a few trips ago, and thankfully there were other groceries along with it.

I noticed we had a few frozen steaks hidden in the bottom behind some packaged instant meals. I have neither a microwave nor a grill. Hmm.

I brought a glass of milk down with me back into my sub-basement, and noted that Bob had already gotten back into his book. "Twelve hours topside, max."

"Sixteen," he countered, not bothering to look up from his book. "And you'll want a pillow's softness to go with that."

Which was also upstairs, sitting on my bed. "Bob," I growled, pouring the milk into a beaker. I lit a small fire under it to bring it to boiling. "I need the information on these guys sooner, not later. What else will we need for the potion?"

He quickly rattled off the other six ingredients, but we were fresh out of pine needles. "Fresh gingerbread, or something else from a Glade plugin," he offered instead. I, as an economic wizard, prefer to get my less bizarre spell ingredients at Wal-mart or dollar stores when I can, so cutting corners with cheap-but-effective ingredients is a favorite pastime of mine.

Every potion has eight parts: one for the base to hold it all together, five for the five senses, and one each for mind and spirit. They're a wonderful tool for a beginning wizard, and there are a few things they can do better than any other branch of magic. The downside is they're slow and specific; you need to know exactly what you want, and they can take hours or days to brew depending on how difficult your goal is. I'd asked Bob for a Full Night's Sleep potion before taking on a loup-garou (super werewolf) years ago, but the best I could brew at the time was a potion of super coffee. The brightest candle burns quickest, and it's one of the few times in my life I'd completely drained myself of magic. I'd been captured and beaten with a tire iron as a result. Another Pick-Me-Up was a no go.

A quick nap, though, could be worth its weight in gold in my profession, and I'd taken plenty of those over the years. If I could get the same effect in a potion, maybe it'd mean the difference between life and death next time.

"Even a partial night's rest isn't going to be easy," Bob warned me as I pulled the ingredients down. "And you'll probably need to conk out for at least a few minutes to get even a partial effect."

"How much will it give me then?" I asked, then we both kept quiet as I measured out some gentle breeze for the sound.

"Maybe an hour and a half of rest out of fifteen minutes real time napping?" he estimated as I moved on. "And you'll want to try to stay as close to fifteen minutes as you can, or the potion'll wear off and you'll just stay asleep for another couple hours. We can tweak it to wake you when it's almost done. Turn down the heat on the milk, we want it warm for most of the mixing."

I nodded, turning down the burner, and asked, "Bob, you said there was a bunch of contradictory information on the Monsters earlier. Why won't you share it?"

He made an ugly sound, and I moved between him and the potion just in case. "Oh, don't give me that," he said dejectedly. "I can't hurt the potion from here."

He paused, and I heated some bacon-bite dog treats on another burner, for taste, while he mulled the question over. "The wrong kind of information is dangerous," he began slowly, "for the same reason that information on witches making deals with devils was dangerous in the middle ages. Even if some of it really was true, it might be just enough to get you into serious trouble with them." He paused again. "I can safely say that you could have a soul gaze with one if you stared at its eyes, but it might take longer than normal or no time at all. ...If you could get me a good sixteen hours on the streets, I might be able to dig up some more facts and fancy."

I sighed. "Bob-"

"I can't do it in twelve, Harry," he cut me off bluntly. "If I'm going to do this right, I need to catch them unaware, and there's a good chance they'll _still_ see me. Neither of us want stories of a certain spirit of intellect floating around where the Fey might find out about it, or you might as well grab that claw hammer and have done with it."

I focused on the potion. It was going to need to simmer for a good long night no matter how much I wanted it ready, and the ingredient for the mind was either a daydream or actual dream, so I was going to have to nap today anyway.

"...Harry, I'll even promise not to make too much trouble on the surface. But I'll want another novel."

"Twenty four hours," I finally said. "Do it right, and come back as soon as you're done. You can take up to twenty four hours, but get back sooner if you can. The report isn't due tonight anyhow."

He smiled wide, as only a skull can. "You got it, Boss. Now, what was that you were asking about time?"

I scowled, then told him about the encounter I'd had with Morgan.

He whistled, a high pitched noise given he didn't have any lips. "Gotten yourself back on the White Council's naughty list, have you? You told Thomas I'm down here in case you don't come back alive, right?"

I huffed a laugh and mixed in the pillow's softness before grinding up some melatonin pills with a pestle and mortar. "You have my permission to find him if I die. You want to go with Mister as soon as he gets back?"

"Nah," he said, "I need to keep an eye on you when you mix in the dream, day or otherwise. It'll be best if I leave between now and noon. Don't worry about the time problem just yet. I'll find out what I can without breaking anything."

* * *

My dream was important. I knew that. Something about Sue and a scientist… and then it was gone, and I wasn't sure I'd dreamed at all.

After my quick nap near the open flame (don't give me that look, I had a spotter) and a distant feeling that I was forgetting something important, I left the potion to simmer and called my voicemail at my office. I may not be able to have much in the way of technology at home, but my old rotary phone was necessary for my job, whenever it didn't drop calls.

Yes. My landline phone can drop calls. It's not funny.

I'd gotten another few messages from random church members telling me to give up my witchcraft and that they'd pray for me, another few death threats from anonymous sources that I'd long since realized were mostly harmless, if annoying, and several from reporters asking for free interviews in exchange for fame. None for cash this time around, so I didn't bother writing them down.

Near the end, I finally got a message worth hearing, but one I didn't want to hear. When the SI branch of Chicago PD leaves me a message, it's rarely good news.

"Dresden," Murphy's light voice came through, and I was glad the connection was clear enough to hear my favorite Lieutenant. "When you get this, give me a call at the station. We don't have a body yet, but I need to brief you on recent events. It counts as consultant work, so it pays."

Huh. That's different. Normally, Special Investigations holds the purse strings tight until somebody dies. It's more a sign of desperation than anything; they get the worst cases in the precinct, and a couple wooden nickels for their budget.

"Sounds like the higher ups have finally realized that SI actually matters now that you've put us on the front page. Thanks for that, by the way."

It sounded vaguely like someone muttered "jackass," but my friend Karrin Murphy was a proper lady, albeit one who could break my arm without getting out of her desk chair, so I couldn't be sure. At least it explained the paycheck.

"I'm also getting a paid vacation soon, so I'd rather leave you in capable hands as opposed to tossing you out to Homicide, but we can burn that bridge when we get to it. Call me back, Dresden. Soon."

I grabbed the phone and walked past my lazing dog back towards the basement when I heard scratching at the door. I set the phone down down and strode over to let Mister in. He sprinted full bore into my legs the moment the door was open, and I had to hold onto the door handle to keep from falling over. After rubbing his scent into my shins in greeting, Mister sauntered over to his dish in the kitchenette and ate a few bites, then saw that Mouse's food bowl was also full. It had been left untouched, awaiting Mister's approval.

Mouse got up as soon as he saw that Mister had returned. The big dog walked over to his bowl and laid down in front of it. Mister pawed his face, hard, and the huge dog got up and walked a few steps away, where he sat. Mister then ate a bite of Mouse's dog food, and then flipped the bowl over and splattered dry dog food across the floor. Mister walked away haughtily as Mouse's tongue lolled out in a happy doggy smile, and the dog took it as his signal to dig in, lapping kibble off the floor.

I shook my head at their old ritual, and headed downstairs with the phone. I'd adopted Mouse about a year ago before a run in with a coven of porn witches (you read that correctly), back when he could fit in my pocket, but Mister still treated him like a newborn pup that needed to be reminded of the house's pecking order. Of course, Mouse goes along with it. I like to think he appreciates the ritual in his own way, seeing as it's one of the few times Mister bothers to fully recognize him.

"It's no good," Bob told me as I came down. "We're going to have to start over."

"What? Why?" I asked, nearly dropping the phone as I took two long strides to my potion. I inhaled deep, and blinked as the unfinished potion made my eyelids droop the slightest amount.

"The dream didn't take, and you don't want to risk getting this one wrong. You make a bad sleeping potion, and next thing you know you've got a beard and have to wait for princess charming to kiss you awake." His eyes glinted. "Not that there's anything _wrong_ with that, mind you, a quick kiss from a beautiful lass is just the thing-"

I let out a long, exasperated noise, and let him keep talking to himself as I went upstairs to get more milk. When I returned, he'd rambled on to more lecherous topics about how best to appreciate a kiss upon waking up to one, and how to move it to something a little more… earthy.

"Enough, Bob," I cut his gibbering off. "What was wrong with the dream?"

He chuckled softly, eye lights twitching left and right. "Nothing, really. Just didn't take."

I paused, then looked a little closer at him. "Are you… scared?"

"Me? 'Course not, boss, never. Well, except when Winter Fey might be around, but that's a whole other thing, of course. Nothing wrong here!"

"Bob, you're about as hard to read a billboard. What's going on with you today?"

"Nothing. When's Mister going to get here? I think you could work a pleasant daydream into the potion without me now that you've put the first one together without me, no problem. I mean it won't be much trouble to do it again, and I need to get moving soonest."

"Bob, slow down," I insisted, putting my hands up and attempting a calming gesture. "Mister's already here, he just got in. What're-"

There was an orange flash, and Bob was gone up the stairs.

I put the milk down and stared after the spirit, and my mouth may have dropped open a bit.

Bob is a spirit of intellect. He holds himself together with magic, and during the day, he lives in his skull, a kind of gilded cage or doghouse, for protection and comfort. He doesn't take risks, though, not when he could do the same thing carefully. More than once over the years, his advice to me had been to take a quick vacation to another state or country to meet chicks and come back when whatever magical storm was threatening Chicago had passed. In a word, he likes safety, and I'd expected to need to bring Mister to him.

The sun, on the other hand, is a magical cleansing force that cleaves through magic like a wave of force from an atom bomb, and only fortified magic survives a sunrise, let alone hours of concentrated daylight. My home's wards, for example, thrum like power lines if you have the magical ears to listen to them, because I built them strong, to last for years without much upkeep. Even so, I have to renew them from time to time to keep the sun off, and that's with my home's Threshold, the sense of Home I've built into the very walls just by living here, holding the wards up as a hell of a base.

Now, chances are pretty good that the few small windows I have near the ceiling aren't letting in much sunlight, and that Bob could easily get around them without much effort, but if I had to bet on which would win, I'd give Bob ten thousand to one odds of surviving for more than a few seconds in direct sunlight. He doesn't even like to _see_ sunlight.

He just shot upstairs in the daytime like I was after him for six-months-past-due rent money.

"Bob?" I asked carefully, taking the stairs back into my living room one at a time. "Is everything OK?"

"No, Harry, it isn't."

Mister looked at me from across the room, eyes glowing orange. He pawed once at the door, then sat back and stared.

"Bob?"

Mister tilted his head.

"Bob, if it's that bad, I won't force you to go out there today. There are other ways to find out what I need to know."

Mister pawed at the door again, not taking his eyes off of me.

I sighed, strode across the room and pulled the door open, and Mister ran back out into the daylight, protecting Bob from the worst of it. Mouse whined quietly, and I agreed with his sentiment.

Strange happenings. I didn't like it, not one bit, and I got the feeling I didn't know the half of it.


	6. Peace and Quiet

To answer some reviews briefly: As monsters are integrated further into the Dresdenverse and have more interaction with Dresden himself, several of your questions or concerns will be addressed fully, including those regarding the Undertale primary cast. Yes, including Frisk.

The White Council is an international secret society that is currently neither recognized by governments nor cares to work within any laws they don't have to. Within reason. They control plenty of political and monetary power (as well as magical), and represent humanity in the magical community. They are above the law due to their anonymity. As above, these and other concerns were already planned to be answered during the story itself. Yes, anyone who played Undertale knows that several of the laws of magic as I've presented them were broken; those should help generate conflict in the story.

On sunlight: it's dangerous to spirits and weak magical constructs, not regular monsters or Monsters.

This story takes place post barrier break in Undertale, and more or less during Dead Beat in The Dresden Files (all rights reserved by respective owners), as the story will now show more clearly now that much of the set-up is complete. I'll be twisting things as needed to fit the current story, so while I appreciate being called out on things I got wrong, some of them are intentional while others I can't really help. I'm not a perfect writer, but I am doing the writing. I'll do my best to keep at it.

As an aside: I wrote the prologue with the hopes of encouraging others to write similar stories, or at least those with Dresden and Undertale together in some way. When nobody took the bait, I wrote out some drafts, then chapter summaries (there were 30 planned given my broad brush strokes, but that's liable to change), and now the story itself. I'm open to suggestions, however, that may be integrated into the details of this story over time.

Thank you all for your support, and I'll attempt not to have more non-story blurbs or author's notes cluttering my chapters in the future. If you review, I'll try to answer.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled story, already in progress.

* * *

The air was artificially dark and humid, but cold, too, like the inside of a morgue overgrown and abandoned in the wake of some unknowable tragedy. I found myself holding on as best as I could with my knees, a thumping drum beating steadily behind me with whispers of "Polka will never die," on the wind, leaning forward over the scaled back of a dinosaur, pulling forward into a dead sprint towards-

BRIIIIIIING!

I shot up, looking around my lab in a haze, then grit my teeth as a massive headache took my whole head and-

BRIIIIIIING!

The telephone was trilling away, and I swore as I noticed my burner had gotten turned up and the potion was nearly boiling over, my face not-quite-burned from the heat. I rushed to-

BRIIIIIIING!

I knocked the potion over and swore, then managed to quickly turn my burner off. I sighed deeply, rubbing my temples as the next-

BRIIIIIIING!

"Damnation and Hellfire, you have bad timing!" I swore into the phone's receiver. Normally a simple Hell's Bells would suffice, but I'd almost caught my hair on fire and wasn't in the best of moods over the completely ruined potion. _Again_.

"Oh!" a smooth male voice returned, hissy with static over my emotions messing with the rotary phone. "Perhaps I should call back when the timing is more appropriate?"

"Asgore!" I shouted with forced good cheer, then brought my voice down to more "indoor" levels, wincing at the noise. "No, no, just have to clean up this mess. Hey, what time is it?"

"Nearly evening," he supplied. "While I understand that I did not request the information on the White Council until later this week, I have been asked to gather whatever you have thus far as swiftly as possible. Even a quick verbal report on whatever you've gathered will-" the voice cut out for a few words, then pulled back with, "-we can get it, the better. Will Burger King-?" His voice cut out again.

"What?" I asked, then two sore brain cells managed to rub themselves together as I realized where I was. "Right, the report. Need it now. Swell. Burger King-"

I felt nauseous at the thought of eating Burger King for the umpteenth time in the last week, but I couldn't remember how many times that was with the blood rushing up to fill my head and pound on the walls.

"How about we…" I took a deep breath, wiping the grit from my eyes. "McAnally's pub," I tried again. "Accorded Neutral Ground. Shouldn't have any trouble there."

"Trouble?" he asked, curious. "I'm not sure I under-" static.

"It just means if anybody wants to start trouble there, they have to take it outside," I offered dumbly, because it was the only thing I could think of to say.

"I see," he said. I couldn't focus on or hear his tone, so had no idea how he was responding to me acting like I was. Or something.

"They've got nice steak sandwiches," I managed weakly. "Don't know if you eat that or not, though. They have fries, too."

"Where can I find this establishment?"

I had to tell him the address three times over the bad connection, but he finally got it and asked me to meet him there in a few hours. Not in three or four, "a few." And whatever the heck "almost evening" meant, I wasn't even sure.

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye and picked it back up, dialing Murphy's number from memory. It rang a bunch of times and I held the phone as far from my head as I could until the ringing stopped. No noise came through, until a click and then a dial tone. I put the phone back on the hook and dropped my head into my hands-

BRIIIIIIING!

"God- **damnit**!"

I picked up the phone and brought it down to where I'd hunched over.

"Dresden speaking," I said quietly.

"Dresden, can you hear me n-" static. Murphy's voice, though, before it cut out.

"Barely," I said and exhaled deeply. "I don't know if I caught a bug or something, I'm waking up sick."

"Oh God, you too?" She asked, and I heard somebody shouting in the background over the static. "Listen, can you get down to the station? Things are a mess-" static, and I forced myself to stand up as best I could. I somehow managed to push myself slowly up the steep stairs into my living room as it cleared up, "-an you be here?"

"I don't know," I guessed at an answer, and Mouse whined quietly as he saw me come up the stairs; apparently he'd been waiting for me near the trapdoor. I had a thought, and swallowed fuzz from my mouth, then said, "Murph, has anybody else been having nasty dreams?"

"I just said that. Is your phone on the fritz again? Nevermind, just-"

Static.

Then a dial tone.

I went into my kitchen, putting the phone back on the receiver as I got a glass of water and some tylenol, downing both quickly.

BRIII-

"Dresden," I said into the phone.

"Dresden, I'm going to repeat this until it gets through: get to the station, get to the station, get to the-"

"Get to the station, I got it," I cut her off.

"The sooner the better," she said, then her voice said from farther away, "No, I'm going to see about sending him there _after_ we clear up this mess." Then, back to me again, "How soon can you be here?"

"Soonest," I offered, "If nobody pulls me over on the way. I don't know if I can drive."

She sighed, then, "I'll be there soon."

I hung up the phone and sat on the couch my brother had borrowed as his bed, and Mouse put his head in my lap, his eyes looking up at me soulfully. I rubbed his ears and he licked my hands, and I laid back on the couch.

What must have been seconds later, I distantly heard a knock at the door. I tried to turn my head towards it, but couldn't manage to move. Something started pounding on my door, then an explosion roared through my wards, then my window shattered and a figure tried pushing through-

I blinked as Mouse's rough tongue on my face woke me up, his whines and pawing at my chest urging me to move. I grunted and rubbed the sides of my head, then heard more pounding at the door, but it was real this time. Mouse jumped off the couch. I managed to stand up and stumble over, then opened the door to find Murphy had arrived.

"What time is it?" I asked, blearily blinking down at her as I slouched against my doorframe.

Murphy stood at around five feet tall if it's an inch, and… I couldn't focus on her finer details much beyond that. Police jacket over a grey shirt, usual blonde hair and blue eyes, probably a gun in her under-shoulder holster…

I groaned and fell, and Murph stepped into me, helping get me back down onto the couch. She managed to push a styrofoam cup into my hands, and ordered me to drink it.

I did, a little bit at a time.

Fifteen more or less silent minutes later, and life had finally come back into focus. Mouse was firmly pressed against my leg, and I realized that I'd managed to finish drinking whatever was in the cup. I looked around, and Murph had stood herself by the open door, looking out into the evening, the blue sky hazing towards darkness.

She was wearing her police jacket over a white shirt, some part of me noticed. I held my focus on that thought and tried sipping at the edge of the empty cup.

"What was this, anyway?" I broke the silence, and she turned to me with a small frown. Nothing sad, more frustrated than anything, and I'd say it looked out of place on her own small form if she wouldn't kick my ass as soon as she heard me say it. She's small, but has won Aikido championships and knows how to toss people twice her size around like they're wiffle balls.

"Coffee," she said shortly. "We stumbled across our little miracle cure in the station when a few individuals seemed to get better after having some. It seems to take hours for the symptoms to go away without it, apparently; some poor schmuck, joined the force just last month, is allergic to coffee and had to be kept on his feet, walking around. That's how long it was until he was able to think straight again."

I winced. "Allergic to coffee and still an officer? How?" I asked, then shook my head. "Nevermind. I think I had a long, cold shower before, that helped me the first time around. If it's magical, maybe setting a circle or a few other protections could help."

"If?" she asked, then snorted. "The only connection we've had on the victims so far is they're apparently minor practitioners or sensitives, or whatever, but not all of them would admit it. That's part of why SI was pulled in on this case in the first place."

"Swell. Is that why you wanted to brief me?"

"I was kind of hoping _you_ could brief _me_ , or rather, us. Back at the station. But from the looks of things, you haven't waved your hands and pulled a full report on the phenomena out of your ass yet, either."

"My ass has many offerings, both magical and benign," I countered, "including glib comments on fairy fashion statements and zombie apocalypses. I think we should cut it some slack here."

"That's twice," she said suddenly, alert.

"...what?" I asked, lost.

"That's twice you mentioned zombies since I got here," she waved a finger. "You were muttering about it between sips of coffee. And you're not the first, either; one of the college girls back at the station woke up in the lobby screaming that she was being eaten alive."

I swallowed. "Great. Because we didn't have enough problems as it is."

Murphy narrowed her eyes at me.

"I'd say you don't want to know, then I'd say it's classified, and then I'd tell you anyway," I admitted. "But don't tell anybody else. I trust you with this, but it's the kind of thing that could get really out of hand, really, really quickly."

"I'm listening," she said tightly, but I was relieved. She wasn't mad at me, she was mad at having more on her plate. Once upon a time, she'd had me arrested when I wouldn't spill the beans, but I've put everything on the table for her before, and she can handle it; once I told her fairies don't like iron in the middle of an attack at a hardware store, and she cut a chlorofiend in half with a chainsaw when she realized she couldn't just shoot it. Murphy's good people, and I trusted her.

"Dresden?" she asked, concerned. "Stay focused, alright? Look at me here."

"What?" I asked, then realized I'd been sitting there for a full minute, just silently staring into the distance. I got up to get another glass of water, and drank it quickly.

I looked at Murph, who raised an eyebrow.

"I'm good. Alright, I'll just say it: Time travel. We're dealing with time travel."

It was her turn to blink at me. "Back to the Future, honest-to-God time travel?"

I shook my head. "It's out of my league, Murph. Complicated as open heart surgery and about as delicate. I don't know the first thing about it, but…"

"Guess, then," she demanded.

"...it feels like we're remembering things that didn't happen, or haven't happened yet. And I dreamed I was riding a dinosaur towards a crowd of zombies."

There were a few moments of silence.

"...Harry, why the hell do you have to make life so complicated?"

* * *

I think it goes to show what kinds of messes we've lived through that Murph took me at my word when I'd said that. She'd insisted that I take Mouse or some other form of backup with me if I was going to leave my apartment, then had to get back to work as quickly as possible. As it turns out, that "paid vacation" she'd mentioned from her message was mandatory, and she was going to be forced to hand off Special Investigations to some hotshot detective from Homicide tomorrow. Apparently, new policy required every member of the force take time off every once in awhile so that the higher ups could see what changed and what didn't; apparently it would also help ferret out any corruption, but I'd zoned out a bit during Murphy's rant on the subject.

To sum it up, she was going to be forced to go to Hawaii, but… she said it in kind of a funny way.

"I can cancel it if you want, to stay here and watch your back," she'd said, even though it was the first vacation, let alone paid, she'd had in probably years. "Time travel and zombies. I'd think that's at least as exciting as a trip to some island in the Pacific."

I'd said life wouldn't be so complicated for her if she'd gone, to relax and enjoy herself. I'd get it figured out, like I always did. Told her to take some time alone and enjoy the peace and quiet.

"I'm… not going alone," she'd said.

I'd asked who with.

"Jared Kincaid."

A super mercenary most often responsible for guarding the Archive, Ivy, a nine-year-old human girl who instantly knows and remembers everything that's ever been written down; she's a living backup of all human knowledge, forced into the role nearly at birth. Last year Kincaid, Murphy, my mentor Ebenezer, and I had all taken down a nest of Black Court Vampires led by Mavra. Black Court are rare nowadays, because they're better known as Bram Stroker's vampires; when the White Council published their weaknesses to everyone, they took a turn towards extinction, and they aren't getting there fast enough.

And all I'd said back… I'd told Murphy to have fun. We could hold the fort for her while she was gone, despite everything.

She'd told me goodbye.

I blame the entire thing on being hungover on whatever the hell was going around, because it wasn't until after I'd cleaned up the ruined potion off my lab floor, tried and failed to eat a bowl of Fruit Loops from our unfortunately still-too-many-boxes-strong supply, and was getting ready to leave when it had finally hit me that I shouldn't have just said goodbye.

I was jealous. I didn't want her to go, didn't want her to stay and fight, and didn't have a good reason for either. And I was distracted. And neither of those things are conducive to paying attention to your surroundings.

"Mouse," I'd said, thinking of Murphy, "I think she wanted me to tell her to stay. I am not a smart man."

He'd woofed in agreement, and brought me his lead in his mouth. He probably realized whatever Murphy was getting at, because, well, don't tell anyone, but he's smarter than me. And don't tell him, either, because he's not humble as it is. I chuckled at him, then pulled on my leather duster, clipped his leash onto his collar and took a moment to leave a message for Thomas: I'll be out to Mort's Duplex office, then meeting the King of the Underground Monsters at Mac's. See you after.

So, distracted by the aftermath of the fresh headache and deciding to latch on to the thought that zombies meant death, I knew I'd need more answers about the other side. And death and the other side in Chicago meant Mortimer Lindquist, famous for leading seances both personal and in auditoriums since before magic was declared more or less real by the public.

Morty's a wormy little con man who spent a bunch of years with too much to drink and not enough spiritual power to back it up, but he's also an Ectomancer; since the public realized he's as real as I am, he's cleaned up a bit, and now he can commune with spirits and the dead better than he's been able to in years. Despite lying to his customers about their dead loved ones to make a quick buck, the truth less important to him than a paycheck, he's still more up to date on the spirit world than I am. With Bob out for 24 hours and not much time until I'd needed to meet with Asgore, probably, I'd decided to stop by Mort's house to see what I could shake out of him. That, or try to drag him out of the same magical haze everybody else has been in recently.

So when I pulled up to Mortimer's converted duplex in Bucktown, with a small white picket fence and a few dinky Halloween decorations signalling the holiday only a few days away, I wasn't paying attention. I parked across the street and opened the Blue Beetle's back door to let Mouse out, and made sure I had his lead firmly wrapped and tied around my weak left hand before contemplating whether to grab my staff out of the back or not.

Mouse, on the other hand, always pays attention, and his senses know bad guys better than I do by far. So when I heard him growling, I snatched up the staff and spun around, scanning the area. There were a few cars parked on the street, but nobody else in sight.

"Who's out there?!" I'd shouted, staff held before me.

The light hadn't quite disappeared, but it wasn't bright outside by any stretch of the imagination. The street lamps flickered on, and I flinched as they buzzed to life, barely a pale glow to signal the transition from evening towards night. I chuckled, lowering my staff for a moment and stepping forward.

There was a shot, a whisper of a bang like a firecracker, and then a little hornet flew past me and shattered my car's back window. I'm not sure when a little girl had gotten into my back seat, because there was a girly scream that came from my car. The only other person who could have screamed when they realized they were being shot at was me, and I don't scream like a little girl. So there was an invisible girl in my back seat. Who screamed.

Mouse, uncaring about who might or might not have screamed, took off towards Mort's front gate like a charging bear. His lead was wrapped tight around my left forearm, and I was pulled off my feet and dragged along the asphalt on my side, my spelled leather duster keeping my skin from being left behind. I bit down against the flair up of pain in my left hand, and managed to pull on the leash and shove myself gracelessly to my feet just before I smacked into the sidewalk. Mouse barreled through the unlatched gate, swinging it wide open to crash against the bars of his fence, when I heard another gun bark quietly from somewhere behind me, then felt like somebody had just kicked me between the shoulder blades. I leaned down as best I could and kept my head down, trying to present my spelled duster more than anything else, and that invisible little girl riding Mouse screamed again.

Mortimer's front door opened, and the fat little bald man, wearing a blue bathrobe, stepped up and asked belligerently, "Who's out there?"

Then he saw me.

And his face went white.

Another bark, and Mort's eyes went wider as his front window shattered.

I think he may have recognized me.


	7. Dead Men Walking

We interrupt this story for an exciting announcement:

I've gotten a review from a fan who wants to write a Dresden Files/Undertale crossover!

WOOO!

I can't wait to read it! You go, Guest User I can't reply to!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled story, already in progress.

* * *

I didn't play football in high school. I did pretty well in track and field years before that, even setting a record long jump the first time I used my magic before it was thrown out as "completely impossible for a kid to jump that far." I managed to jump clear of the sand pit we were supposed to land in, if you can believe it. Skinned my knees up pretty bad in the process, but it was the most exhilarating thing I've done in my life before bullets and bad guys became a regular occurrence.

I didn't play football, but the bullets at my back convinced me that a solid tackle against Morty to get us both the hell into his house was a good plan. I got in low, grabbed Mortimer around his barrel with my long arms, and then a pair of little girls watching from right next to Morty's front door screamed as the two of us tumbled inside, Mouse alongside us.

It was Mouse, my favorite dog, who closed the door behind us with his nose as we collapsed on the floor.

I know. He's a good dog.

Whoever was on the other side of the incoming fire decided that close groupings of fire on my back weren't good enough seeing as I wasn't bleeding out on the floor, and suddenly the gunfire got louder and faster, from a series of controlled firecrackers to a storm of explosions, tearing into the front of the house and door. I managed to untangle my hurting left arm from Mouse's lead and threw it forward. My special bracelet, adorned with tiny shields of various metals and signs of protection, fell free of my long jacket as I held my focus and shouted, " _Riflettum_!"

A blue dome of energy lit into being between me and the door, and it held firm as bullets glanced off of it's curved shape and ricocheted into the entryway walls. Mouse managed to leap clean over my shield spell, and I heard a heartstopping wet slap before he landed, followed by a short whine.

I looked down, wide eyed, at Mouse, holding my shield up firm. He stumbled on landing, then tripped and fell hard on his shoulder and slid a few feet down the hall, leaving a little trail of red behind him that reflected some of the room's light.

Blood. Those bastards shot my dog!

I clenched my jaw as I forced myself to my feet amidst the gunfire, using my staff to haul myself up with my gloved left hand held forward, and I stepped away from Morty, still moaning on the floor. I walked up to the door and pointed my staff at it, turning my shield aside for a moment to shout, "FORZARE!"

The spell blew the door clean off it's hinges and over Morty's little white picket fence into the street, and the gunfire stopped a moment as I stepped out onto his walkway, blue shield gleaming just barely visibly in the evening light. I threw caution to the wind, and I opened my Sight.

A wizard's sight shows him the truth of the world, and no matter how long you live, that truth never, ever fades. I would remember the scene I Saw with my Third Eye with perfect clarity for the rest of my life, any time I bothered to remember it. There's a price, of course; plenty of Wizards crazy enough to walk around with their Sight open all the time, seeing that much Truth, especially the bad parts… they tend to go insane sooner rather than later.

None of that mattered now. What mattered was that somebody had hurt my dog, and I was going to make damned sure they never made that mistake again.

I Saw Morty's front porch had several ghosts watching the battle with interest. There were two kids staring with unblinking eyes at my face, and a few deceased Native Americans with tomahawks were shouting war cries. One ghost in particular stood out to me, though. He carried an old flintlock pistol and appeared to be wearing a Colonial Marine's uniform with a long, dark blue coat that fell to his calves. He was huge, though more World's Strongest Man than a bodybuilder, stood about as tall as I was, and he noticed me looking at him immediately. He smiled a mean smile, and pointed to a spot farther up the lane.

I followed his motion past the sidewalk where an old man had died suddenly of a stroke in the summer, leaving an imprint of his passing if not a ghost like the others Mortimer drew to himself as a beacon to the dead, and saw a dark figure shrouded in a fog of life and death somehow weaving closely to her body hidden behind a white van shielded with lead paint, and I quickly closed my Sight.

I hadn't Seen too much, but my eyes were still focused on the spot she was hiding behind when I dropped my Sight. It was a white van I should have, and would have noticed if I'd been listening to my instincts on my way in, and I drew in my power, swallowing the frustration, the anger at my hurt dog, the rage I felt at this would-be murderer, and I pointed my staff at the van, jerking it violently towards her with another shout of, " **FORZARE!** "

The smell of brimstone was in the air for just a moment as the power was loosed from my staff, and I heard a yelp as the magical sledgehammer of force pounded into the side of the van with one vicious blow, powered by my emotions as magical fuel. The van flipped onto its side and crumpled inwards like a beer can, and I half hoped it managed to crush the gunwoman. I stepped forward, holding up my shield, and heard a shout in reply.

I had taken my foot off the ground, ruining my balance and focus on my shield when the force pushed me back, but I managed to keep my footing by taking a few steps backwards. Whoever this was, they were strong enough to slug me, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. Even so, a Wizard fights differently compared to any number of magical or vanilla threats, so I needed to be on my guard.

I crept forward, keeping my eyes moving as I approached the van. Step by step, looking left and right, I got about halfway there before I chanced opening my Sight again.

The Colonial soldier from earlier had apparently decided to accompany me, and I nearly threw another spell at him as he appeared at my side.

"The lady assassin has already departed, boy," he said crisply, ignoring the staff now pointed at his face. "'Twould be appreciated if you would attend to the young master Mortimer; he appears to have sustained a slight injury."

I just nodded, and closed my Sight again. Whatever had hit us may have had an aura of death, but I got the feeling anybody who called Mortimer "master," even in passing, probably didn't want him dead.

Even with a ghost asking him for help, a slight injury didn't take precedence over making sure poor Mouse was OK, so I got back to the house as quick as I could.

"YOU!" Mortimer shouted from his doorway where he leaned. "Every time I see you, there's another mess just waiting to happen. You brought a gunman to my house, a freaking-" He sputtered for a moment, gesturing to the bullet holes in the front of his home. "You got me shot at and you completely destroyed my front door! What the-"

And then he just stopped, looking at something just next to me before I could say anything in response. I kept my mouth shut for a moment, looking at the empty spot myself while Morty listened to what I think was something from the huge Colonial guy.

"I don't care he ran her off, it's his fault she was here in the first place!"

"Where's my dog?" I interrupted, and Mouse stepped lightly around Morty to meet me, tongue lolling happily out of his mouth.

I dropped down to greet him and looked him over, noticing the nasty-looking red splotch on his side immediately. I pulled his matted fur aside and exhaled sharply, then looked closer. I sighed, deeply, and Mouse licked my face before wagging his tail.

Somehow, thank goodness, Mouse had only been grazed by the shot. It was bloody, but had already stopped bleeding.

I hugged my dog close while Morty finished saying whatever it was he was talking about with the ghost, and I turned my attention back to him.

"I'm fine, thank you very much, just a _bullet_ in my _leg_ ," he spat.

"Wait, what?" I asked, and Mouse shook his head. Morty lowered himself to the floor, sliding down carefully to avoid putting any weight on his left side, and I got closer for a better look at it.

"Don't bother," he muttered, waving me off, "just call me an ambulance and get the hell out of my house."

"That van was here before I was," I said suddenly, realized I'd been the only one driving down this particular street when I'd arrived.

"Yeah, Stuart said that as well," he admitted darkly. "So why is it that I'm being targeted mere moments before you arrive at my house, hmm? Because I don't normally let myself get involved in anything. _Ever_. Least of all anything you're dumb enough to be a part of."

"Morty, I came here for information," I said firmly, because it's usually what somebody like him responds best to. "I need to know as much as you do about what's going down, and I need to know before somebody else starts kicking down the ghostly side of your door. Tell me, and I'm out of your hair."

"Ambulance," he insisted around clenched teeth. "My landline is in the entryway. I don't say a word until professionals are on the way."

Which meant he'd be willing to talk just as soon as I made the call.

I stepped carefully over Morty to get inside, and he leaned away from me as best he could given his leg injury with a look of disgust on his face like I smelled of bad fish and the peasantry. I couldn't blame him, and I felt at least a little guilty that he'd gotten injured; if there was any chance the lady assassin was responsible for some of the bigger problems we were facing, then it was possible she knew I was going to be here before even I did.

I swallowed at the thought as I punched 911 into Morty's 1970's connected handset in his home's waiting room (because I guess bringing people who want to talk to the dead all the way into your home isn't always the best of ideas), then waited patiently, moderately impressed that the device hadn't exploded into smoke when I'd thrown so much magic around earlier.

All it took were the words "shots fired" and "Harry Dresden" in answer to the few short questions asked, alongside the address, before I was assured that cruisers were already on their way, as was an ambulance. I hung up the phone and returned to Morty.

"Alright, Charles Xavier," I told him, wincing as I sat down alongside the opposite side of the hall and the new bruises on my back took a moment to remind me they existed. "I like the new bald look over your combover, by the way, it's nice. So, why exactly was there an assassin here to kill you just moments before I swooped in to save the day?"

"Oh, because there's no way somebody found out you were coming over and set up to meet you, right?" he said caustically. "Obviously they were here for me."

"Have any headaches this morning, Morty?" I cut to the chase.

He squinted and glared at me, then gave a grudging, "Yes."

"You're at least twice as famous as I am, even after everything, and somebody seems to be hitting anybody with a lick of talent here in Chicago," I informed him. "There are hints that necromancy is involved somehow, and you're more up to date than anyone I know on the other side. So," I waggled my fingers at him, "make with the dead talking and I'll be on my way."

"Make with the- do you have any idea how complicated it can be to converse meaningfully with the dead?" He asked me, then gave an "ow" and put a firmer hand on his leg, which Mouse gave a lick. He shoo'd the dog away with an idle wave of his hand, then continued, "Don't answer that, you'll hurt yourself. Let's just say, really complicated."

"But you can do it," I countered.

"...but I can do it, and already have," he admitted. "Tell you what," he grunted, shifting his weight uncomfortably, "you make sure I don't leave any blood behind where somebody can use it against me, and I'll tell you what I've heard."

I heard the sirens getting closer, which didn't give me much time to either destroy the crime scene evidence or decide to try to convince the police they should instead.

I needed information, and it sounded like Morty had it.

Sorry, Murph.

"Talk while I work," I told him, and Mouse stepped closer so I could use him as support to get to my feet. While he spoke, I started pointing my staff at the fresh blood and whispered, "Limpiarza."

The blood didn't so much disappear as pool together from wherever he'd spilled it, and slowly came into a ball at the end of my staff as Morty watched.

"There are skeletons walking around near the Golden Coast," he said through his teeth, putting more pressure on his injury with a short groan, "But so far as the undead can tell, these aren't any skeletons raised by mortal hands. From what I can gather, either an immortal did it or it's not necromancy at all, like it's something else entirely."

"It's a start," I said, sweeping my staff back and forth to ensure I'd gotten everything, "but I'd like to hear a bit more than that if I'm walking into something that serious."

"They're apparently hard to pin down when they're moving, or at least one is," Morty continued, "But they spend enough time near the Golden Coast that the spirits think they either live there or… something. And they aren't altogether bothered by sunlight."

"Oh, joy."

"That's not the half of it," he said, wincing as he reached into his blue bathrobe (and I was reverently thankful to see he was wearing underwear and an undershirt underneath it) and pulled out a little map of Chicago with ink splattered across it. "Something in my headache this morning told me I'd made this at least a dozen times, but it keeps changing. Not the map itself, but… it's like I'm remembering it looking different, I think. Here; it's everywhere the ghosts of Chicago have found echoes of deathly energy, and I circled the area those skeletons walk."

I took the glob of blood outside and slowed for a moment, feeling a painful tingle in my scarred left hand. Fire. I swallowed the feeling down, focused my thoughts, and a quick shout of "Fuego!" caused the mass to burst into flame, and it died out just as the first squad car turned the corner onto Morty's street. "You're not the only one with déjà vu," I told him, ignoring the old fear. "Apparently Chicago PD has already had more than a few cases of practitioners complaining of headaches like that one. Myself included."

I held my hand out for the map, but Morty held it back for a moment. "I'm leaving, Dresden," he told me flatly. "Whatever's going on in Chicago, I want no part of it. You take this, and you leave me the Hell alone!"

I nodded. "Of course, Morty. Wouldn't dream of it."

Mouse chuffed in disbelief as I took the map, and Chicago's finest jumped out of their cars to shout at us to "Freeze!"

I held my hands up and Mouse wagged his tail, breathing loudly as his tongue hung lazily out. He looked at the officers and barked gently.

A few minutes and the end of that particular misunderstanding later, and Mortimer was being carted away while another paramedic took a look over my back (despite my protests to the contrary).

"Hell of a thing," the dark-skinned man muttered, lightly feeling at the bruises. "Your coat is bulletproof?"

"It just spreads forces out," I told him again, caught between annoyance and wanting to gush. If there's one thing I appreciate about magic being out in the open, it's that I can take pride in my work without people thinking I'm loony about claiming the impossible with a straight face.

My coat, as he called it, was a gift. It's a nice, long leather duster I got from an old girlfriend before she got herself half turned into a vampire. I like the old western look, and months had been spent stitching runes of protection into every inch of the inside while I poured magic into the construct. The end result was my favorite leather duster, and I traded the risk of overheating in summer for the protection against piercing weapons and bullets every day I could. In October, on the other hand, it pulled double duty and kept me warm on top of everything.

And now I could tell a medical professional, with a straight face, that I was bulletproof.

I bit back the urge to brag.

He shook his head and chuckled. "I'm guessing it's harder than sin to make, or you'd sell them by the dozen."

"Got it in one," I admitted as he took out a tube of something and showed it to me.

"This is a basic anti-bruising cream with a touch of antibiotic and anesthetic we use for serious bruising, like you have back here," he said. "Unless you've got any allergies or want to walk away with your AMA, I'd like to put this on you."

"Do I need it?" I asked bluntly. "I'm already late for an appointment somewhere, I think."

"It's no magic miracle cure, but it'll keep you from getting an infection where the skin broke open," he said. "And you're stuck here until you're free to go."  
"Might as well," I sighed. "How's Morty doing?"

"The leg injury? Bullet went straight through," he uncapped a tube of his medical whatever-it-was, "but it mostly hit fat, barely muscle and no major arteries; looked like it hurt more than anything. His ambulance is about to leave."

It was about that time that an officer with a few extra stripes on his shoulder walked up with a clipboard of all things, looking more at it than me.

"Dresden, right?" He asked in a low voice, interrupting our conversation.

"That's what it says on my-"

"Great," he interrupted me again, making a little check on his sheet. "I'm just double checking your description of the perp. Run it by me one more time?"

I sighed. "Like I said before, I didn't get a good look at her through the side of that van. I only caught the very edge of her side."

"And you were able to positively identify that the perp was a female even though you saw her, and I quote, 'through a van?'"

"You want I should just say it's magic?" I asked sarcastically.

He paused, then flipped the sheet up. A moment later he put it back down, then repeated the process twice more. Finally, he said, "Fine. If you want to declare this testimony as assisted by magic, then you'll have to accept that it may not be admissible in court until verified by a professional, and our current professional on file is one… Mr. Harry Dresden."

He looked up from his clipboard and gave me a look that made me glad "if looks could kill" was only a saying, because I would probably have burst into flames otherwise.

"Meaning," he continued flatly, "if we catch this woman, chances are pretty good your witness testimony won't be worth a damned thing to any jury with even one anti-mager on it unless you can give me something else."

"...I saw her curves under her robe," I deadpanned.

The officer looked at me critically for a moment more, then shook his head and wrote it down before walking away.

"We'll be done here soon, Mouse," I told my dog (who wasn't sporting so much as a bandage, the lucky mutt), and rubbed his ears.

While the medic finished slapping whatever-it-was cream on my back, I pulled my leather duster back on and started looking around for the fastest route back to my car, and my heart stopped.

Setting up only three cameras on the very outskirts of the police line stood a gaggle of reporters, and I could tell from here they recognized me.

Shit.


	8. Catching Up, Thinking Forward

As soon as they saw me looking, the reporters shouted my name across the street. Repeatedly.

I sighed deeply, realizing they were standing between me and my memorable Blue Beetle, the lovable car's chassis betraying me with the various colors of parts that had been replaced over the years. It wasn't like the reporters would miss a chance for another free interview, was it? I needed to stop telling them things.

I walked towards them determinedly, and hoped at least it'd be quick and painless this time.

"Mr. Dresden!" a dozen voices shouted.

I raised my hands high and slowed as I drew up to the group, and the newbies in front started shouted a bunch of questions I couldn't make out against the others as the group in the back hurriedly started shutting down their equipment. The sound and spotlights some of them were holding blinded me, and I blinked and covered my eyes as a figure moved up and crouched next to me.

"What are you doing?" I asked as the technician started stepping around me, and I saw chalk.

I didn't hesitate, just jumped backwards out of the circle the tech had been drawing. I also tripped backwards and fell on my ass, but my shield was up in an instant.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" I shouted, shoving myself to my feet with my left arm held forward, the dim glow of blue faintly visible in the evening air.

The sound died out instantly, and the tech slowly put his hands up, showing me the rarely-used chalk piece he held. "Just drawing a circle, Mr. Dresden," he said carefully. "You said they help stop you from hurting the equipment. I didn't mean no harm."

I exhaled harshly, then dropped my shield and took a piece of my own chalk out of my duster. I showed it to him, and to anybody else looking, and gave him a little shoo-shoo motion as I stepped forward and to the side, and drew up a perfect circle of my own. I nudged it with my foot, and the barrier of my will shut off the ambient energy of the world and the crowd in an instant. I focused my will, and the barrier shimmered slightly in the evening air. I let it pass, and gestured vaguely to the news crews in the back, who got their equipment turned back on.

"Magic etiquette 101," I said evenly, not bothering to wait for the equipment to do whatever it was doing to get working again. "Don't try to use magic on anybody you don't know without their permission, and don't let anybody you don't know and trust use magic on you without knowing exactly what you're getting into." I pointed down at the chalk circle. "Normally, a drop of blood on a circle like this is enough for anybody, even normal people with no magic, to create a barrier against ambient magic and even some direct attacks, if it comes to that. It can also," I pointed down at the technician, who hadn't moved, "trap some magical beings inside, depending on how well you build it."

The technician scrambled up and back into the crowd. I shook my head.

"Of course, a little circle like this, just whipped up, isn't enough to hold anybody with willpower and a mortal soul. You could just walk across like it wasn't even there, or push a boom mic in my face and get me to blow up all your equipment," I ended pointedly, and noticed a reporter flinch. "'Course," I continued, thinking out loud, "any little magic baddies without one would be trapped, but bigger bads could break through if you're trapping something too big for your britches."

I blinked a few times, remembering where I was. "Sorry, I don't have time for many questions. I'm already late for a meeting, so if you'll please let me get to my car…?"

I knew immediately it wasn't going to work. They didn't surge forward across my circle, but their faces got intent and I braced myself for about a thousand questions I didn't have time for. As the noise grew, I reminded myself that these were the people I wanted to protect, and they were just as lost as any number of people I'd helped over the years, there were just… more of them.

"Mr. Dresden!" a loud voice cut across the others, and the noise died down as she continued, "Who or what attacked you and Mr. Lindquist this evening? Is it a threat to anyone else or did you destroy it?"

"Uh," I stammered, and I looked over and remembered I'd half-crushed a nearby van. "Pretty sure she's alive, possibly or possibly not wearing a stereotypical cultist's black robe. I'm looking into it."

"Mr. Dresden!" A man forced his way to the front, "Are you aware of the headaches magic users are suffering from? What are they and what's causing them?"

"I've had a few, and-" I cut myself off, realizing these people could very easily get the message out to the people. "Alright, actually, I need you guys to spread the word: anybody suffering from a headache like that, rather than a plain old bad-day headache, get them coffee, or a shower, or wake them up even if they're awake. Whatever their morning wake up routine is, do that, or get them a ton of caffeine. I'm looking into what's causing it, and hopefully I'll be able to get it to stop soon."

"Mr. Dresden, is it true you burned down an abandoned warehouse recently?"

"No comment."

"Mr. Dresden!" Another woman wearing a blue parka and thick glasses pushed her way forward, "Is it true that the new Underground Monsters are being killed by the dozen by the magic community?"

"What…?" I asked, stunned. "I- what?!"

"Recent reports from Wisconsin indicate that U.M.s are being targeted and attacked often enough that they've taken to traveling in packs. What stance does the magical community have on this accusation against them?"

"I-I-" I stammered, stepping over my circle and trying to get around the crowd. Cameras were hurriedly shut down as I moved, and some small part of my brain realized they'd have to have trained to respond that quickly. "I have no idea. I hadn't even heard- killed by the dozen?!"

"Is it also true that the magical community is trying to cover up these blatant terrorist attacks against the U.M. community-"

"I have- I don't-"

I'd managed to get around them, and glanced back to see Mouse waiting for me, hair raised, probably sensing my discomfort.

With the reporters shouting questions louder and louder, I took one last wide-eyed look around, then took a step back. A moment later I turned and ran, proverbial tail between my legs, and sprinted for my car.

Mouse jumped into the back seat through the busted window as I threw open my door, jammed the key into the ignition and… waited while the car's engine sputtered.

Sensing weakness, the reporters started towards my car before, miracle of miracles, it gave a guttural turn and growled to life. I threw it in gear and puttered away as fast as the Blue Beetle could go, confident that I could claim being late to the meeting instead of the abject terror I felt at facing the reporting mob as the reason I'd fled.

As I drove towards Mac's bar, I tried to get my heartrate back down, and thanked the Volkswagen manufacturers of old that they'd decided to put the engine in the trunk of the car and farther away from my wizardly panic. The implications of what they'd said was staggering, and I tried to think over the consequences it was going to have.

Declarations of war or outright attacks by organizations are serious business on the magic side of things, but that reporter had it wrong. There is no one "magical community," there are dozens, and whoever's attacking them is either working alone, or they're being picked off. And if they're being picked off by members of any given faction, then the new monsters had a real grievance, and a second war in the magical community… I couldn't imagine what kind of impact that could have on things.

I shook my head. Yet another nightmare to contend with on top of everything. Part of me hoped the reporter was just wrong, but I'm never that lucky.

Even with the glass of my back window splayed about on the back seat of my car, Mouse had somehow managed to make himself comfortable around his minor injury. Good for him. The zen dog didn't let little things like a gun fight or glass shards or a swarm of piranha reporters ruin his evening, and I wasn't going to let a little thing like bruising and a headache ruin mine.

Half a block from Mac's bar, I spotted a figure parting the evening crowds as he walked, and I couldn't decide if I should smile or scowl. I parked outside the underground bar underneath a street lamp and opened the back for Mouse, coughing lightly at a passerby in green who was eying me when the shattered glass fell onto the asphalt. I gave him my best shit-eating grin as I used my duster's sleeve to whisk more of it out of Mouse's seat and into the parking lot. Then the passerby caught sight of the figure parting the sidewalk, and wolf-whistled.

"Thomas," I greeted as the figure strolled up. "How was work?"

He'd changed into something a little more functional, but still flashy enough to catch the attention of any passing women and a few men when augmented by his White Court Vampire powers of seduction (patent pending, I'm sure). He wore a long jacket, grey and sleek compared to my duster's western brown, and a button-up white shirt with what I imagine were some kind of black designer pants. I noticed the handle of his favorite curved blade peaking out of the jacket at his hip.

"Forget work," he looked me over, "you started the fun without me?"

I shook my head. "It's a long story involving reporters and invisible figures screaming."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Only you, Dresden."

I wiped my forehead, then giggled, and it just bubbled up and out into a full blown laugh. I tried to stop, but then I had a picture of floating reporters and zombies floating around screaming like goats in a whirlwind of darkness, and I started laughing harder, bending over and holding my aching sides as the figures morphed into ghosts on horseback, tilting as they just sort of floated off the ground, and I coughed as my back spasmed and my head started pounding like I'd just drank fifty bottles of Mac's finest.

A moment later, my head cleared completely, and I blinked, looking around. I was laying on my side on the sidewalk. Thomas had set a circle around me, his curved blade in one hand and a bloodied finger pressed into the circle. I blinked at him. "You know how to set a circle?"

"Shit," he muttered to himself, standing up and sliding his blade away, "what other remedies were there supposed to be?"

"I'm fine," I said, shaking my head. "It worked. Thank you. You know how to set a circle?"

He shook his head, exasperated. "It's one of the most well-known magical protections in the entire world, Harry. Are you alright?"

I waved him off, and noticed Mouse was sitting patiently at the edge of the circle. I held up one finger to signal him to wait, then pushed it across the boundary, breaking the protective barrier. When my pounding headache didn't return, I nodded. "I'm alright. Damn, I wish I'd thought of that before I ran into those reporters. I'll have to pass it along to Murph at SI to set circles on any headaches that come through before we get this fixed."

Thomas offered me a hand up, and I let him help me to my feet. He scuffed the dot of blood into the ground, fouling it.

"I'll explain inside."

Mac's bar is a staple of Chicago's magical community, and provides a safe haven for anybody looking for the best beer and steak sandwiches in town. There are thirteen columns with old fairy tales etched into them, thirteen circular tables and thirteen lazily spinning ceiling fans strewn around the room, all carefully positioned to dissipate any loose magical energy any emotional wizards might bring in with them. There's also a sign hanging just inside the door before the staircase down into the old building, which reads "Accorded Neutral Territory."

The stairs down are a byproduct of Chicago's status as an ever-sinking city, where the first floors of buildings are built with the knowledge that they're likely to sink ten or fifteen feet down before they settle, with windows built high on the walls and doorways strangely high to enter before the settling starts. The sign, on the other hand, is a more recent addition, likely as a result of the war between the White Council and Red Court. It's a simple rule that no fighting is allowed on the grounds the sign is displayed in, and that if any fights start they must be taken outside.

I tapped the sign as I passed, and noted how full the bar seemed, with a line at the bar itself where Mac was setting out cups of some green liquid. The line quickly emptied as patrons dropped bills on the bar and took cups back to their tables, where groaning at different volumes filled the room with a feeling closer to a hospital than a restaurant. The King I'd been expecting was nowhere to be found.

Mac himself was a simple man, with the kind of stern, fatherly expression you'd expect when he was pretending he didn't know you "borrowed" the family car, and he's somewhere between an old thirty and a young fifty. He's wise, too, like I think all bartenders should be, when he's not keeping to himself.

"Dresden," Mac greeted, sparing a glance as I approached the bar. He finished serving the drinks to the others and wordlessly offered me one of the few glasses remaining.

I eyed it. "What is this?"

"Headache cure," he said simply.

Of course my favorite brewer could swing up a hangover cure, no matter the hangover. I shook my head respectfully and sat down at the bar with Thomas, Mouse sitting nearby. "Just learned sitting in a circle helps it pass. I'm guessing everybody else just had one?"

He nodded, then pointed to the grill.

"Maybe," I said. "Say, you see a seven foot tall white fluffy goat-man-thing come in here? Might have asked about me?"

He paused, then raised an eyebrow.

"We were supposed to meet here. I might still need a table."

"Haven't seen him," Mac said evenly.

"I'll hold off myself for now. Thomas?" I asked my half-brother.

"I'll have a steak and one of Mac's Finest."

Mac glanced down towards Mouse, who whined at me.

"No fries for you," I insisted darkly. "My hazmat suit is at the cleaners and there are other people who need to be able to breathe in the building."

Mac had already poured Thomas a dark liquid I longed for, and turned around to attend his grill.

"So," Thomas said after taking a long drink of happiness-in-a-glass, "What've I missed between breakfast and now?"

It was a long story, but I brought Thomas more or less up to speed. He called me an idiot when I mentioned Murphy, and mentally thumbed through his rolodex of known persons over the cultist-looking girl without coming up with anything over the short description. Finally, he asked to see the map, but I waved him off.

"Outside, maybe. Too many faces I don't recognize in here today."

Thomas shrugged it off and Mac returned to refill his glass; somewhere during the conversation, Thomas had silently been served and had almost finished his steak (apparently he didn't get it in a sandwich, preferring to eat it this time with a fork and knife, the heathen), and I'd caved and gotten Mouse a little bit of steak as well; Mac had already put down a bowl of water for him, because Mac's good people, always looking out for his customers, no matter the form. Having the money Asgore'd paid me with burning a hole in my pocket hadn't agreed with me, and I'd paid the meal already. I was sure that feeling would pass when I saw my bills again.

And still the King hadn't shown up.

"Hey, Mac," I stopped him from leaving after giving Thomas his refill. "You've usually got an ear for these things. Know anything about the headaches?"

He paused, and seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally, he said, "Stronger practitioners, worse headaches. Maybe."

"Yeah, I'm not sure either, but my head just about splits open whenever it happens. Anyway, I appreciate it, Mac."

He turned back to his grill.

Thomas tossed the last bite of his steak to Mouse, who caught it out of the air, and drained his ale. He burped, then set the glass down and stood up. "Outside, then? I want to see the map."

I nodded and we all got up to leave. Up the stairs and outside, I motioned to the circle Thomas had set, and we both stepped inside.

Two figures walked up the sidewalk towards Mac's bar, both in lab coats, one much larger than the other.

A whisper of energy later and the circle rose, and I reached into my coat to get the map as the figures stepped up into a light jog.

Mouse growled, and my heart sank as I realized he was standing outside the circle, and my staff had been left in the car before we'd even entered the bar.

"Hello, Dresden," a young woman's sultry voice offered in greeting, her figure somehow recognizable even though I'd never seen her before, and I took it all in instantly: 5'6, pretty, a little make-up, and those tired, bloodshot and calmly insane eyes that had broken my mind only minutes ago.

Except they hadn't. Had they?

Thomas swore and the curved machete-knife (kukri, I finally remembered, it was called a kukri) was suddenly in his hand, but he didn't cross the circle.

I blinked, confused for a precious few moments as the second figure closed the gap between us in an instant with a huge leap, flesh and clothes tearing away to reveal an elongated face of teeth and too many bones, and my mind finally woke up to the danger we were all in. I drew my arm back and flinched as the ghoul the woman had brought with her crashed face-first into the circle I'd raised just moments ago, teeth gnashing uselessly and claws flashing in dozens of quick slashes against the barrier.

Mouse, behind us, set his paws and tensed, then gave out a massive bark, comparable to a massive whump from a ten-foot subwoofer in a club. Then another. And one more.

The ghoul clapped its hands over its ears, screaming like it was trying to drown out the sound with a cacophony of its own. Behind it, the woman started calling up power of her own, a sort of oozing blackness darkness that she drew in from every shadow in the vicinity, and I focused on holding the circle firm against whatever she might throw at us, hoping against hope that Mouse would be safe outside the circle behind us until we came up with a better plan.

Far behind the necromancer, now that I realized she was one, a glowing cyan wave of lines hurled themselves into the air, and I gasped; I could only watch as the distant arrows raised, high into the air, higher, until finally they arced and started down again.

I concentrated harder, blotting out everything else. Whatever else happened, I would hold the circle.

"What is-" the woman asked, then screamed; the arrows, now close enough for me to realize they were six-foot-tall spears, had crashed harshly into her, skewering her and her ghoul friend bloodlessly. As the other spears landed, each shattered against the ground or my circle and splintered, vanishing a moment later.

But whatever it was, it wasn't enough. Even though the ghoul had slumped against my circle's barrier, the necromancer managed to turn herself, shaking away the spears, and held up a hand as a second volley approached. The darkness oozed up and caught and ate the spears in a small circle around her even as several suddenly turned and shot towards her from all directions rather than just above, and I decided she needed a little extra help getting caught in the next barrage. I elbowed Thomas, and pointed at the ghoul. He nodded.

A quick note about using magic: all the gestures and symbols in the world only matter if you believe they matter. Wands, staffs, whatever else you use, it's only there to help your mind focus the magic more safely and accurately. If you're skilled, you can get away with tossing magic around without them. If you're unskilled, you can just as easily blast out your brain or set yourself on fire. Desperate times...

I broke the circle long before the next spears got close, and I focused on my right fist as Thomas stabbed the ghoul in the gut, the thing finally trying to shake off the spears of power itself. I held my fist tighter, swearing I'd never forget to put my Force Ring on again no matter how dazed I might be leaving the house, and drew deeper than I had before, focusing not only on the power, but also on not shattering every bone in my arm.

"FORZARE!" I shouted, and my arm loosed an unsteady-but-powerful blast of force at the necromancer's back. I bit back against the pain as the energy slammed against the dark energy she'd surrounded herself with, and most of it just sort of… was eaten. The rest did little more than shove her a little bit. She glanced hatefully back at us as I lifted my left arm up and called my shield against the glowing mass of spears, and I felt Mouse push against my legs as Thomas stepped away from the ghoul to my side. The necromancer reached out a hand towards us and pulled, and I felt myself… lose focus.

The air was too thick to breathe through, and the colors around us became muted. I was dimly aware of the hammering against my shield as I pulled my mental defenses up against an entirely different kind of wave, like an ocean of pressure on my head. I fought to remain standing, until Mouse pressed harder against my legs.

He barked one last time, loud as a foghorn, and the sound seemed to cut through the heavy air.

"You escaped death this time, Dresden, but next cycle you're mine!" the Necromancer shouted, leaning down to grab her ghoul by its (his?) leg, and then she swiped her other hand down, ripping a tear in the air, and stepping through it, dragging the ghoul's dead weight after her.

I held my shield against one final storm of spears, then held up my bloody, shaking right hand up to fight against whatever else was attacking us.

No more spears came, and I spotted the source of them immediately. Two figures approached, one in silver holding a blue spear at its side, the other in gold, at least seven feet tall.

"Mr. Dresden," King Asgore said softly, walking into the light I'd parked underneath, his gold plate armor sparkling under his purple cloak. "It is a pleasure to see you again."


	9. The Finer Things In Life

**Author's Note** :

Thanks to my beta readers new and old for all their help, with special thanks to ML for their Undertale expertise and to AJ for his usual editing review.

Now that I'm getting deeper into the Undertale side of things, I would also like any reviewers with spare time to critique the lines of dialogue used by those characters. Is Undyne in character, for example? I've taken plenty more time trying to ensure this work is at least moderately accurate, but anything helps. Thank you for your time, and I'll see what I can do about improving the quality of my work moving forward.

Cheers!

* * *

There's something about pain and adrenaline that tends to clear a person's mind, provided the injury wasn't to their head. It's one of those things the body does to prepare itself for a fight, or to help you survive one you're already in. The human body is a remarkable thing, capable of great feats of strength, speed and endurance that can make even some of the more supernatural threats think twice about playing nasty with the "puny little humans." Just about everybody's heard that old story of a mother lifting a car off of her child, or of some poor schmuck in the woods running like the wind from a bear and then climbing a tree. Probably while screaming. Less heard of are the consequences to the body when it gets pushed that hard, because there's plenty of pretty good reasons humans aren't able to bench press a small car whenever they feel like it.

Trying to lift triple the body's normal limit in one go can literally rip the muscles off your bones if you're unlucky. Which is kind of what my arm felt like after I'd messed up that force spell that necromancer (a small part of my mind took a moment to start calling her Dr. Death) had shrugged off. The adrenaline and other stuff a body puts out in a fight numbed the pain a little, but I could still feel the blood leaking out from under my fingernails, and see the way my forearm was turning bruised-black. It wouldn't stop me from casting, but it would make it hurt even more to try to throw spells with my right hand in the meanwhile, _especially_ if I tried without my staff again.

Despite all that, I held up my shaking, bloody hand, pointing it more or less in Asgore and the Spear Knight's direction.

"Asgore," I greeted through clenched teeth. "You're late, I think."

The mind moves quickly when it's pushed, and I took a moment to get a better look at the both of them, extending my wizard's senses.

Asgore, King of the Underground, was wearing heavy golden plate mail under a thick purple cloak, and as he stepped forward and shifted his arms, the cloth pulled back to reveal the Monsters' symbol, the Delta Rune, etched into his armor. I also caught a haze around his gauntleted paws, and I suppressed a sudden twist in my gut over the possible fire outside my control. He lifted those paws into a placating gesture with a "we're peaceful, harmless creatures, we swear!" smile.

Before he spoke, I gave the Spear Knight a half-second once-over. His platemail was silver to the King's gold, layered more heavily in the chest, with jagged metal spikes coming up from the neck brace to give the red-plumed helmet the illusion of a shark's serrated teeth, but there were chinks covered only by leather in the armor under the armpit and between the legs, as though the long chest piece was designed more as a skirt than for platelegs; the armor continued at the knee, but there was only thick leather above that. I got the feeling something was missing, but wasn't sure what it was.

The Knight's man-length spear was held back behind him, tip pointed at the ground, like I'd seen in some japanese comics. It's a good move if you're worried about tripping and spearing yourself with the tip while running, but a terrible fighting stance at close range. It's also a move designed for a sword, not a spear.

"We mean you no harm, Dresden," the King said softly, eying my outstretched, shaking hand. "We'd believed your shield would protect you. I am sorry for your injury, friend."

I held my hand up for a moment more, seeing Thomas with his Kukri held off to the side, following my lead. He'd fight it out if I did, even if there was a chance it'd get us both killed. He trusted me, and I trusted him, all the other crap aside. But he wasn't the reason I put my hand down.

Mouse nudged my leg. He wasn't whining or growling, just letting me know he was there. Like I've said, my dog is practically psychic about these things. If he wasn't gearing up for a fight, then I probably shouldn't be, either.

I swallowed against my suddenly dry mouth, and took one last look at the King's covered hands. He might be ready to throw down a ton of fire, but he hadn't. Yet. I lowered my throbbing right arm, the pain just strong enough to remind me to be a little more careful next time, and I managed to fight off the instinctive urge to cradle it in my left hand.

"Like I said, you're late," I repeated. "Where were you an hour ago?"

"Unavoidably detained," he sighed, looking at my arm like my mechanic Mike sometimes looks at the Blue Beetle after any particularly strange damage, that critical squint just before he accepts the car and doesn't ask questions about how precisely the seats had gotten a year of mold grown into them in the span of a single week. "May I take a look at that?" he asked, pointing a finger at my injury.

"I'd rather you didn't, actually," I snapped.

"Argh!" the Spear Knight grunted, muffled by his helmet, and started swinging his spear around while he yelled. I took a step back. "What's with the third degree all of a sudden!? After we helped fight off that dark wizard, why are you treating _us_ like the enemy here?!"

The King just sighed deeply and put one of those massive gauntlets on the Knight's shoulder. He stiffened, then roared and threw the spear at the ground. I held my left arm up, ready to block anything he'd throw, and Thomas sidled up next to me and behind where my shield would appear. Arms free, the Knight ripped his sharkhead helmet off and threw it at the ground, revealing his face; it was an _actual_ fish-like face, with lips pulled back from _real_ shark-like teeth in a snarl. His scaled face was blue, his ears were fins, and he had an eyepatch over his left eye, though the uncovered eye was yellow and slitted like a cat's. I noticed he'd pulled his red hair, that plume I'd thought was part of his helmet, into a ponytail.

"I'm sick and tired of everyone treating us like we're about to go off and start up another war, when it's us dying out there!" He yelled in a remarkably feminine voice. "We just want to help out and every time we think things are going to be ok, it just-"

The King squeezed the knight's shoulder, and his anger just died. He dropped his head, clenched his fists and then just… let it go. "Please forgive Undyne," Asgore said softly. "She's had a very hard day."

"I don't care what kind of day he's had, you don't ju-st…" I trailed off, that last sentence catching up with me a moment later, killing my train of thought. "Wait, that's not a guy?"

Everybody just stared at me, like I'd just asked if they were _absolutely sure_ that punting kittens over my back fence wasn't considered an acceptable pastime. Thomas may have known because he's an emotion-succubus, but there were no signs pointing to Sir Spears-a-lot not being a Sir!

"Heh," the Fish Knight, Undyne the King had called her, huffed, getting a strange twitch at the corner of her mouth. "You thought I was a guy?"

"Uhm…" I uhmed, dropping my shield arm. "Are you sure you're not? I mean, you've got the whole 'thousands of spears, let's blot out the sun' thing going on, and you kind of look like those guys at the gym who don't skimp out on their wheaties, 'cus of all that armor, almost like you're compensating for something," I rambled, my brain tilting sideways and my mouth filling the silence so maybe I wouldn't have to answer for whatever it was spitting out, "and it just didn't occur to me that you might be covering because you don't have-"

Thomas elbowed me in the gut, and I finally managed to shut my mouth.

Undyne, who I was now categorizing as one of those girls who could fold my lanky six-foot-five form into the Blue Beetle's tiny front trunk, just looked over at the King, who had furrowed his brow and had his mouth open just enough to make it look like he had a question he didn't know how to phrase, and then she looked at Thomas, who just shrugged and shook his head like he didn't have an answer, and then finally down at Mouse. I looked down at Mouse as well, and he just chuffed like an engine that wouldn't turn over. I recognized it as him laughing at me.

Undyne's mouth twitched again as she looked back up at me. "Thousand spears like I'm compensating for something?" she asked, folding her arms. She broke into a wide grin, and I took in the mouthful of shark teeth glinting at me.

A moment later, she doubled over laughing, slowly at first, then leaned back and laughed harder at the sky. "FUHUHUHU! Y-you thought…!?"

Asgore smiled lightly, but it looked forced. I had the feeling this was less "you're really funny" and more "my day requires I laugh now." I've had a few of those. I cleared my throat, but Thomas didn't hear me.

"Thank you for helping us," Thomas said over Fish Knight's cackling. "It wouldn't have been pleasant to fight a necromancer on our own. So thank you."

"Right," I agreed, figuring it was a better choice than pissing off the people holding my next paycheck. "Thanks for the backup. Real nice timing, what with whatever stuff you were dealing with out of the way."

"FU HU Hu ha ha…" Undyne slowed down, then sobered up the rest of the way. It morphed into a grimace. "Yeah. Rough day for everybody. Stuff."

"We have lost friends today, Wizard," Asgore said. "I was shoring up my people's defenses against magical attack."

"Ah," I said with a wince of my own, and almost brought my hand up to scratch the back of my neck before it started throbbing again. I put it back down. "I'm sorry."

"I should like to hope it was not your fault, and that you have little to apologize for." He paused, looking at my hand again, then shook his head and stepped forward with a paw out. "Please, it pains me to see anyone else in pain. May I aid you, at least to stop the bleeding?"

"...Fine. Be careful with it, will you?" I held my hand forward.

Asgore brought his gauntlets together and a ball of fire burst into life between them.

I fell on my ass scrambling to get the hell away from him, tripping over Mouse, managing to crawl a few more steps away before my heart stopped pounding and my head stopped screaming at me to _just get the hell out of there_.

"Harry?" Thomas was at my side in an instant, and I fought to catch my breath, heart shoving itself up into my throat and my head, and my hand painfully jackhammering away with every beat. "Are you alright?"

"F-fine," I managed to say, but it was a little while longer before I really was. Nobody said anything, just stood there, watching, but Asgore had dropped the fire the moment I'd turned fight-or-flight.

"...I'm fine," I repeated, shaking my head. "Just still having a little trouble with uncontrolled fires. Fires I'm not controlling, I mean."

"Jeez," Undyne said, "what kinda mess do you have to go through to be that scared of a little healing fire?"

"Ha. Healing fire. Nice element for healing, fire, isn't it?" I asked sourly. I shook my head again and held up my gloved left hand. "I had a run in with a nest of Black Court vampires last year. Think Bram Stroker's Dracula, if you've heard of him. They had a flamethrower, and my shield wasn't set to stop heat. My hand still barely works. I just need a moment before I put my _other_ hand in a fire, alright?"

"Wizard, I swear to you, I will not harm you with my fire," Asgore said forcefully, and I noted it was the first time I'd heard him raise his voice. "I swear it."

"...Swear it on your power," I said back, looking up past his nose to the bridge between his eyes, avoiding looking at them directly.

They widened for a moment, so I knew he realized what I was asking him to do.

When a wizard makes that kind of promise, they tie some of their magic into it. Magic is tied to belief, and when you break a promise on your magic, it means you don't value your magic enough, don't think it's worth whatever you promised. If you break a promise, you lose a little of your magical power, permanently. It's usually not a huge loss, but it's always noticeable. You don't get to break too many promises made on your magic over the course of your life before it cripples your ability, and you can even lose your spark completely if you keep at it.

I remembered a moment later that the Underground Monsters were _made_ of magic. It was entirely possible I'd just asked him to swear it on his life, literally.

"I swear it, by my magic, that I will not harm you or your friends intentionally, and that I will do everything in my power to help heal your injury this night," he stated clearly, and Undyne blinked her one eye at him. He held his paws forward again, and gave me that tiny smile again. "Please, Mr. Dresden. I am not an expert in the healing arts, but I have practiced them for many years. I will endeavor to be gentle."

I looked at Thomas, who put his Kukri away. He just shrugged. Well. That was a first. Next up, though, was the follow through. Promises are give and take, whether you're giving or receiving.

I held my arm up and looked pointedly away, but the sound of an open flame bursting to life made all the little hairs on my body stand up. A moment later, I felt… warm. Relaxed, like somebody was performing a lay-on-hands over my hand, forearm, all the way up to my shoulder. Then… all the way to my core, stopping at the bruises I'd gotten on my back at Morty's like a heated compress with a hint of gooey aloe vera, like you get for sun burns. It was a little invigorating, and I felt calm, like I'd laid down in front of my fireplace at home and enjoyed a short nap.

Then it was over, and the chilly night returned.

"I am sorry, friend," Asgore said softly as I looked over his handiwork. I stretched my fingers, and they were stiff, like I'd exercised my muscles too hard, but they moved the way I told them to, and they didn't burn or sting like they did before. Healing magic is some of the toughest there is, and most Healers on the White Council had multiple college degrees from medical schools to deal with the complexity of it all, but I guess Mr. Fluffy Fire Paws had taken the time to learn. I clenched my fingers into a fist and nodded at the King.

"Thank you."

"I am afraid my skills were insufficient to the task, but my, er, that is to say," he floundered for a moment, "the Queen may be able to improve on my work. Unless you still wished to visit this bar you spoke of?"

"Whichever," I sighed. "I'd like to get you informed and then get home and get armed. I've been in two fights too many without all my equipment, and it's making me antsy, especially if Dr. Death and friends are prowling for me. The faster you ask your questions, the faster we can go home."

The King knitted his brow and Thomas poked me, then pointed at the front of the Blue Beetle. I didn't ask, just shrugged and waved him over to do whatever it was he needed. "This is your second fight in recent times? That does not bode well."

"I guess I get why you got all freaked out when we just showed up and started taking that, uh, Dr. Death to town, then," Undyne said, giving me another shark's smile. "No hard feelings, eh guy?"

"Bingo!" Thomas called out, then took a freakin' sawn-off double-barrel shotgun out of my car's front trunk. "Figured it'd be a good idea to leave this in here."

"Thomas!" I shouted, furious. "Why the hell didn't you tell me you'd left that in my car?! I could have used that earlier!"

"Uh," Asgore said, looking slowly between us. "Is that modified weapon not illegal to own or use in this state? Or, perhaps, in this country?"

"Between having it and getting my face chewed off by something that goes bump in the night, I'll risk a little jail time over dying horribly," I told him seriously.

Undyne just smiled wider.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the teeth that belong on something a thousand leagues under the sea, or maybe it's the way her one eye goes wide when she smiles like that, but I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't like it when the scary fish lady with the spears o' doom smiled. It just didn't give me the warm fuzzies.

I scowled and asked whether it was going to be a problem that we were planning on moving around armed. Thomas took some kind of yellow spray bottle out of the trunk and started spritzing the sidewalk, and truth be told, I had no idea what he was doing.

"I am merely attempting to be aware of the laws, so that my people can avoid any unnecessary conflicts with them. I do not wish to cause you undue stress."

"So, you fought more of those guys earlier, right? You take any of them out?" Undyne asked, pulling one of her silver-mailed thumbs across her neck with a cruel smile.

"No. Just managed to get shot at before I threw a van at her."

"Harry, did you want to move this along so we could get moving?" Thomas cut in while loading shells out of a box he'd left with the gun, having heard the story before. "Tell them what they need to know and get paid. We've got places to be."

"If you're worried about further conflict, then I must insist that you stay at my home tonight," Asgore said, taking a moment to scan the area, as though somebody else was already coming after us. Though truth be told, they probably were; it's only paranoia if there aren't really horrors out there waiting to kill you. "We have leased a large house on what you call the Golden Coast, and it is reasonably secured against general attack by now."

Thomas and I exchanged looks. "I saw a guy earlier, works with the restless spirits of the dead," I said hurriedly, "and he told me that there are dead things walking around that area. If you're already dealing with attacks-"

"Then we may have left our family vulnerable," he breathed just as quickly in response, then looked up at my eyes. I quickly moved my gaze to his forehead under his golden bangs, not eager to get pulled into a Soul Gaze. "Dresden, where were these dead things, precisely?"

I walked over to the Beetle, pulling the map out of my coat, and Thomas slammed the trunk shut so I could lay it open over the hood under the street light. I paused for a moment and looked up at it, noting the discrepancy, then smoothed out the creases in the paper. Several red marks dotted the city: there was a heavy splotch on both the Field Museum of Natural History and on the University of Chicago (where I had friends I made a mental note to warn), and there were smaller blots on a local bookstore, Bock Ordered Books, on the morgue, and on Mac's Bar, with a tiny red dot on the interstate 90, way out towards Rockford. There was also a circle, with lines spread haphazardly across it, centered around the Golden Coast.

Asgore exhaled sharply, then took two quick breaths. He pointed a gloved finger at a house the lines crossed three times. "Here, we live here! We must move quickly! Go, I'll call ahead to warn them!"

And then the King of Magical Monsters took a cell phone, a newer model that flipped out with a keyboard, out of a pouch he'd had hidden behind his cloak, and I just stood there for a second while he punched in a number on the pad. He looked up only long enough to notice me staring.

"What are you waiting for? Go! We won't fit in your car, we'll just meet you there! Please, hurry!"

I shook it off and crumbled the map together to shove it into my coat while Thomas ran around to the passenger side and got in; Mouse jumped back in through the broken window as I got in and tried the engine. Miracle of miracles, the old car actually started. I threw it into gear while buckling my seatbelt and we got moving.

I kept to backstreets and side roads, avoiding mains and expressways that would be clogged almost no matter the hour, and managed decent time by virtue of being the car most willing to be in an accident. With little to do but mentally prepare (and make damned sure I took my staff in with me this time), I glanced at Thomas, who kept his eyes on the road, looking around for threats along the way.

"You notice everything wrong with that scene?" I opened, keeping my own eyes out for stray traffic.

"Other than you leaving a ton of blood on the sidewalk while dark wizards are running around and not thinking twice about it?" Thomas asked nonchalantly.

I slammed on the brakes, and Thomas' hands shot up to the dashboard faster than I could blink to stop himself from exiting the car forcibly via the front windshield. "Tell me I didn't."

He shook his head as a car behind us blared its horn. "I sprayed it with ammonia. You'll have to tell me if that'll kill the magical connection between you and it."

I'd stalled my engine; I started it up again and got us moving. "I don't know chemistry. Does it break apart everything you'd need for a DNA test?"

"More or less."

"Stars and stones, I hope so. Thanks for the heart attack, by the way, nothing I love more than thinking somebody might have everything they need to try to magically burst my heart out of my chest. Put your seatbelt on."

He clicked it into place and Mouse chuffed. I spared the dog a glance and promised I'd stop short of killing us all on the road.

"Anyway, things were wrong. The street lamp that didn't go out? My car, between the two forces throwing around enough magical power to turn the engine into a bomb? The _cell phone_?!" I shook my head. "How the hell didn't every piece of technology in a thousand yards- how did we avoid a minor power outage? Nevermind," I muttered, realizing, "old power lines. But how'd they- he had a _cell phone!_ "

"Newer model, too, I noticed that," Thomas agreed. "Harry, they're living embodiments of magic. Last I checked, I've got a demon living in my soul, and you didn't see me having trouble turning on a T.V. before I met you. Magic doesn't always have to mean anti-tech."

"But it wasn't just them!" I countered, "I threw around a ton of barely focused force out there, and that Dr. Death lady just ate it! She was _wrapped_ in the stuff!"

"Couldn't that be it?" Thomas asked, leaning back in his chair and gripping it with both hands as I took a turn about twenty miles an hour faster than I should have. "The necromancer ate the magic before it destroyed everything? Or maybe she just has better control?"

I shook my head. "It's wrong. Magic and tech don't normally play nice, not at those volumes. That we're driving away from that wreck in a working car is a miracle."

"Then maybe we should enjoy it while we can, provided you don't wreck us on the way," Thomas said, then added in a gentler tone, "You're gripping the wheel with your left hand a little better than you used to. You seem to have a better handle on it when you're angry."

I looked down at it, then got my eyes back on the road. We didn't speak for the rest of the short trip.

The Golden Coast is the kind of place you expect royalty to live. My friends at the College, a group of teenage werewolves who call themselves the Alphas, have at least one member who had family on the "poorer" edge of the street, and their mansion could eat my small apartment building and have room for seconds. The house Asgore had pointed out was a little further down the way, and the huge gate had cameras around the perimeter.

I got a feeling low in my gut that wouldn't let go, thinking about the Alphas, about how I'd seen a mark near their campus territory, and how I hadn't thought to warn them the first time I'd seen the map, even in passing. I had even more friends about to get pulled into some problem above their weight class, and I swore to myself that I'd get them out of it before they were chewed up and spat out.

The feeling got worse as I turned into the Monsters' driveway, all pavement and cobblestone, with a four car garage competing with a huge room on opposite sides of the walkway up to the fifteen foot tall front door, creating a funnel you'd have to pass to get inside the huge building, just wide enough for a single car to get through if you were OK backing back out of it. I saw a figure standing in front of that great oak door, hands, or rather paws, held up as the Beetle inched forward.

Suddenly, a vertical circle of fire appeared in the air around her, and I slammed on the brakes again. The car lurched. My knuckles turned white against the steering wheel, and I fought down the urge to either gun the engine and back the hell out of there, or to ram her. So of course that was when my car's engine sputtered, coughed, and died. It broke me out of the moment long enough to hope that somehow, it was only because I'd dropped the clutch and stalled it again.

She wore a simple purple ankle-length dress with white trim, with that Delta Rune symbol shown proudly over her chest, and had those same droopy ears and knobby horns that Asgore had. Her white-furred paws were wreathed in fire, another reminder that I had a long way to go before I mastered the element, and a dozen little balls of sunshine danced around and above her, making it obvious she had complete control of wherever they went. She wore a deep scowl, and didn't blink while we approached.

This, clearly, was the Queen.

I slowly opened the car door and held up my hands, trying to emulate some schmuck pulled over for doing one-ten on the freeway and with just a little too much smoke in the car. Thomas held his own hands high while Mouse shuffled around in the back of the Beetle, probably having too much trouble getting back out the window again in the cramped space.

"State your business here," she said firmly, eyes blazing, and I looked over at Thomas. My best bet would be to take her off guard, make her think we weren't a threat. I don't have electricity in my house, it just doesn't agree with me, but that didn't stop places like Best Buy sending me appliance catalogues every other month. I'd gotten bored one day, and read over some of the things I'd never be able to own, and maybe that'd help me out here.

"We were in the neighborhood, just wondering if you were interested in buying a new vacuum cleaner," I offered, shuffling my left sleeve to free up my shield charm and stepping around to the front of the car. "Twice the suction, half the hassle, and it even plays loud music to cover up that nasty wind tunnel sound that just ruins the home atmosphere. Perfect for cleaning up ashes for those little oops moments when the little ones set the carpet on fire. Interested?"

She paused, lowering her hands a smidge, and the dancing flames held still a moment. "Is this the part where you offer to give a free demonstration of this carpet cleaning product, perhaps by offering to clean up the whole house?"

I blinked, then looked up at the house. Mansion. House that eats mansions. "I mean, I wasn't planning on doing anything else this week, so…"

She lowered her paws, and the flame around them went out. The dancing flames did little twirls, but they kept moving around behind her. I noticed Thomas' hands lower out of the corner of my eye, and I lowered mine to mimic him. "I was told to expect company to, how did he say it," she paused, lowering her voice, "'defend the honor of our home against a possible intrusion or invasion of a force of the dead, lest further harm befall our people.'" She squinted at us and her scowl deepened. "Does that make you the company, or the harm?"

"The first one," I said hurriedly. "Unless you think vacuum salesmen should be lit on fire which, let's be honest, I'd completely understand."

"Bork!" Mouse called, but the sound was muffled, like he had the morning paper in his mouth. I looked down at him, then did a double take at the "stick" he'd grabbed, then back at the shattered window of my car.

Mouse had somehow managed to get my six foot tall staff and himself through the car's back window despite the enclosed space and twisting movements he'd have had to do, and he'd done it quickly and quietly.

"Ruphf," He concluded.

The fires around the Monster Queen died out as she took in my massive dog's wagging tail, and she nodded. "You fit the description he gave about you. Quickly, come inside; I will hold the door here against further dangers, though whether any will try our might head on remains to be seen. The others are waiting inside, and I expect some will enjoy the opportunity to finally meet you."

Great. My reputation precedes me. Normally that's a bad thing.

I didn't bother warning her not to invite strangers inside in the future, seeing as I might still be considered one of those strangers and didn't want to see the broad side of those fire orbs any time soon. I reached down and Mouse relinquished my staff, and Thomas' hand retreated from the inside of his jacket. I hadn't seen him move, but then, the only other person I'd seen move that quickly with a knife was Mob Boss Marcone, card carrying vanilla human, so it figured that Thomas was at least as fast.

She didn't bother watching us after we'd passed her. I got the feeling she trusted quickly, but that wasn't always a good thing when you're dealing with Chicago's underbelly, magical or otherwise.

The entryway was grand, with a staircase leading up to a second floor balcony just to the right inside the entryway. There were three doorways to the left, only the middle doorway actually having a physical door, and one more doorway to the right up three tiled stairs under the grand staircase. Further in, the entryway dead-ended in a waiting room with a baby grand piano and a sitting area. I couldn't see much of the second floor from the entrance, other than a deformed lamp and an easy chair.

I felt the new security wards Asgore had told us about wash over me as I passed through the entrance, and gulped; if I hadn't been invited in, I could imagine the kinds of nasty things wards that strong could do. My own wards were designed to turn demons to ash using energy borrowed from power lines that ran close to my house, and these felt about as strong, maybe stronger. Thomas blinked. He was less sensitive, but even he could feel the power as we entered. I thought about extending my wizard's senses to get a better feel for the home without opening my Sight, maybe see what we were up against.

"MS. QUEEN TORIEL!" A voice, one I immediately associated with old memories of Skeletor from back when I was young and could still watch TV, cried out from one of the left doorways. "YOUR DIRECTIONS ON THE BUTTERSCOTCH CINNAMON PIE HAVE LED US TO PERFECT RESULTS! YOU WERE RIGHT! FOLLOWING A RECIPE _CAN_ SOMETIMES MAKE COOKING A LITTLE EASIER TO MANAGE! SOMETIMES! IF YOU'RE INTO THAT KIND OF THING!"

From the farthest doorway came Skeletor's thinner cousin, a tall-faced skeleton wearing a pink apron with frills, oversized oven mitts, and some kind of red cape with shoulder pads the size of basketballs. His eyes had little floating dots of white that reminded me of Bob's orange flame eyes. He was holding a large pie, looked like pumpkin flavor, and the wonderful smell clashed in my mind with the normal decay and death I normally associate with the walking dead. I just held up my left arm, caught between bemused and ready to spring into action to fight the skeleton maid. Skeleton maid. I couldn't be sure whether it was a good thing or bad thing in my life that it didn't rank very high on my list of weird happenings even just this week.

"OH!" The skeleton yelled, not bothering to change to an indoor voice now that we were actually in the same room, "GUESTS! WONDERFUL! COME IN, WE HAVE PIE!"

The skeleton balanced the pie in his left hand and made to take my outstretched arm in his own like a prom date, presumably so that we'd gallivant merrily into the next room, but I focused my will into my shield. The skeleton's arm slid off and away, and he managed to squint with his eye sockets, the bone knitting inwards in a manner I'd find creepy anywhere else, his forced bony smile turning a little as he poked my shield with his open mitt.

"WOWIE! THAT'S A HECK OF A SHIELD YOU'VE GOT THERE!" He shouted, "DID YOU LEARN THAT FROM UNDYNE? SHE'S A REMARKABLE TEACHER, ISN'T SHE?!"

"Woah, there, pal," I shuffled around to his side as he started trying to sidestep my nearly-invisible blue shield, trying to get a better look at it. "Getting a little close for comfort, especially swinging around a hot pie. You wanna give me some space? And maybe use an indoor voice?"

"THIS IS MY INDOOR VOICE, ACTUALLY!" He placed his free hand over his aproned chest, puffing it out and leaning back like a socialite just dying to share that juicy tidbit of gossip. "DID YOU KNOW THAT METTATON, THE METTATON, TOLD ME I HAVE ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING VOICES HE'D EVER HEARD? THE KIND THAT VOICE ACTORS ASPIRE TO EVENTUALLY REACH!"

"Sure thing there, Skeletor," I offered, trying not to be backed against a corner while Thomas just watched the whole debacle happen. I gestured at the skeleton, but Thomas gave me that little wave that means, "Yeah, no, I'll pass, thanks."

Mouse, on the other hand, chuffed to the rescue.

Skeletor heard the sound and turned slowly to find my mega-dog's tongue lolling out.

"AH! A ROYAL GUARD APPROACHES!" He bowed grandly to the Foo Dog, holding up the pie tin level like a professional server. "HOW GOES THE WATCH, DEAR FRIEND, ON THIS MOST WONDERFUL NIGHT?"

"Chuff," Mouse chuffed, then twisted closed his mouth and twisted his head slightly to the side.

"BUT OF COURSE!" Skeletor put a hand to his mouth. "MY DEAREST APOLOGIES, I DIDN'T MEAN TO BE OVERBEARING! THOUGH IF HE WARRANTS A PERSONAL GUARD-!" Skeletor bowed a second time, this time in my direction. "A ROYAL GUEST WARRANTS A ROYAL DINNER, AND A ROYAL DINNER A ROYAL GUEST SHOULD HAVE! COME!" He pointed a finger skyward. "WE FLY! TO THE KITCHEN!"

Skeletor turned on his heel, cackled madly, and then strode back the way he'd come.

I looked at Thomas.

Thomas looked at me.

I tapped my staff on the ground twice, took a deep breath, centered myself, and followed the skeleton deeper into the house of horrors.

We didn't go very far. The kitchen wasn't twenty feet from the entryway, a huge room with two stovetops on a center island counter and a fridge larger than a pair of vending machines set into the wall just left of the entrance. On the other side of the fridge was a closed glass door, and through it what appeared to be a great dining room. To the right of the entrance was the open pantry door, though I hadn't really realized that a pantry was supposed to be the size of my bedroom and stocked like a supermarket before I'd seen it. The back half of the room, beyond a smaller dining table that looked like it got more use than the huge one the next room over, revealed a great series of glass windows to a huge backyard with plenty of hedges and some kind of jungle gym playset I figured would be more at home in a park than an oversized backyard. Some of the grass had been torn up in square sections I guessed were going to be converted to garden space.

Inside the dining half of the huge kitchen, a small child with medium-length brown hair wearing blue jeans and a green T-shirt with yellow stripes was seated at the table, spinning a pencil in their left hand, their face mostly covered by their right hand, which their face was propped up in. I couldn't tell whether it was a boy or girl, and after screwing up with Undyne, I wasn't about to guess. Skeletor had already taken out a butter knife from one of the room's numerous drawers and was cutting the pie into perfectly symmetrical slices.

"WOULD YOU LIKE A SLICE OF PIE BEFORE DINNER, HUMANS?" Skeletor asked, totally focused on cutting the pie _juuuust_ right.

"...I just realized something," I said to noone in particular, dropping my staff into the crook of my right arm so I could rub my eyes. "Morty's spirit pals warned us that there were 'skeletons not raised by mortal hands' around the Golden Coast, not that there were necromancers. Skeletor here is probably what was confusing them. There's no necromancer here. Probably never was." I sighed deeply, tired all at once. Too many exciting events, one right after another, and I felt old. Old and frustrated.

"You alright, Harry?" Thomas asked, stepping up on my left side.

I shook my head. "Not really," I sighed. " I'm tired, exhausted even-"

"would you say you had a weariness in your bones?" a deep, quiet, cheerful voice asked from the pantry, and my eyes shot up, wide open, to find a shorter grinning skeleton staring back at me. His eye sockets were deep, pitch black around little dots of white, and with a lurch, I felt the beginnings of a Soul Gaze.

A Wizard's Sight shows them the truth of the world, but it's deeper than that. I've tried to describe what exactly we see, but it doesn't encompass the full nature of the beast, doesn't really explain how deeply we're able to see through and past the superficial coverings of the world to what really lies underneath. It doesn't just cover what's there now, either; it opens your senses to take in the world as it really is, was, or could be. When a Wizard Sees something, it's burned into their memory permanently, the vision never fading with time or any amount of alcohol, no matter how beautiful or terrifying the Sight.

A Soul Gaze is all of that, except all it takes is a few uninterrupted seconds of looking into another person's eyes. From the outside, it doesn't even look like much.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and even vanilla humans can feel the depth when they look into each other's eyes. Countless poets and writers over the millennia have tried to put into words what they've found, and they only scratch the surface.

Normally, I could look into a monster's eyes without fear of a Soul Gaze. True vampires, the Fey, all the nasties that go bump in the night? They don't have souls. Some could argue they don't have free will beyond what their instincts push them to do.

I'd forgotten for a moment that these new Monsters, the refugees from the Underground, had souls. And now I'd found myself staring into one.

I found myself standing in a golden hall that wouldn't be out of place in some old world monastery's path to the most sacred inner temple, with sunlight streaming in from some of the windows spaced evenly between huge golden pillars reaching up to the high ceiling. Except everything was muted, faded, more piss yellow than lustrous gold, and the air was hazy, choking me with some kind of dust I realized represented countless dead over an untold number of years.

The windows, I Saw, held faded scenes, memories of lifetimes past: a snowball fight between several monsters on the edge of a town, their merriment somehow out of place; a dimly lit bar with a spirit of living fire wearing a tuxedo serving a dog wearing armor while several more played cards nearby, focusing so intently on their game; an edge of a waterfall where a yellow, lizard-like creature leaned dangerously close to the edge, looking into the depths of an unspeakably deep fall; a lab, so deeply buried, blueprints lining the walls and desks, the lights long since burned out, with old machines broken down and forgotten…

I was moving forward, seeing all these things with my eyes watering from the dust, when I realized that all the characters in the scenes were suddenly looking at me, staring into my eyes like a creepy painting you'd find in an old, forgotten castle. They were watching, seeing, quietly cataloging everything in the haze. They were seeing more about me than I could ever know about them.

Down the center of the hall stood the skeleton himself, the comic Sans. He wasn't standing tall, wasn't proud or even all there. He was staring between his feet, one wearing an old slipper, the other a worn out sneaker, never having found their companions, shivering in his white undershirt and blue overcoat. He was bent over with his hands in his pockets, hunched, holding the weight of all the dust in the air and the muted, unkempt state of the whole underground on his shoulders, knowing it was somehow all his fault.

There was a red line across his white shirt, like he'd been cut deeply, and a red substance welled up as he breathed. He took a bottle out of his pocket, labeled Ketchup, and took a deep swig of the spiked substance. The line of red spread, only a touch, and he put the bottle away.

Behind him I saw the end of the hallway, and I tried to understand precisely what it meant.

I knew what it was. It's part of a Soul Gaze to understand the majority of what you see, even if you're missing the context behind it. It was a Void, an endless void of nothingness, pushing forwards, slowly enveloping the walls, the infinitely high ceiling, the very air as it moved forward, millimeter by agonizing millimeter. The darkness was so deep, light almost bent towards it before fading to nothing.

Just behind Sans was a wooden door, sitting in a standalone frame in the middle of the hallway, locked. Sans himself, I realized, was holding the key.

He looked up at me, those deep, unfeeling, empty eye sockets, and I knew he Saw me exactly as deeply as I Saw him. When you enter a Soul Gaze, it's a two way street, and neither of you will ever forget what you Saw.

And Sans knew it.

There was a flicker, and little white flames, just like those Papyrus, the skeleton I'd been calling Skeletor, blinked to life in his eyes. The muted gold brightened, just barely, as he stood a little taller to meet me. He took his left hand out of his pocket and held it out to me, the forced skeleton's smile on his face turning up ever so slightly as his fingers flared.

Dozens of floating skulls, shaped like wolf's skulls but split up the middle, tore themselves into existence, filling up like a wall of guardians alongside Sans, between me and the abyss, and their left eyes all flared to life. Their mouths opened, a bright light building inside them, and I could do nothing but stand there as they all fired beams of power so intense they tore me apart.

And then it was over, and I was standing back next to Thomas in the kitchen.

Sans' eye sockets went wide, and he raised his left hand, pointing it at me just as I'd Seen in the Soul Gaze.


	10. Same Puzzle, New Pieces

A Soul Gaze takes only a few moments from an outsider's perspective, no matter how long it seems to take on the inside. I'd walked down that hallway, Seen Sans guarding whatever that wall of void was, and been attacked by his mental representation, all before Thomas had fully turned to see who had spoken from the pantry we'd thought was unoccupied only a moment before.

So the room at large was rather surprised when I threw up my shield at their pantry, dropping my staff back into my right hand and squaring up to fight with their produce and non-perishables.

Sans' skeleton grin widened, but he dropped his hand, stepped backwards and _vanished_ , like he'd never been there in the first place.

"Shit!" I shouted, angling myself to cover the room at large along with the pantry. "Where'd he go?!"

" **Is that any way to greet a new pal**?" the voice asked from the hallway behind me, and I spun, barely catching a glimpse of blue before the skeleton vanished again.

I tried to turn right, back towards the kitchen, but my staff was held out and Thomas caught it half an inch from his face, stopping me halfway.

"SANS! STOP ANTAGONIZING OUR NEW FRIENDS!" the skeleton I'd called Skeletor, whose name Sans' soul told me was actually Papyrus, shouted at his usual volume.

"maybe you should step outside, pap, go see how toriel's doing," Sans said from the dining room door, and I gathered my power in my staff, ready to use it if I had to. The sigils and glyphs up and down the focus glowed a fiery red.

" **Stop!** " somebody shouted, and I turned to see who it was.

Standing next to Papyrus was the kid, hands clenched at their sides, shaking in frustration. Their eyes were held almost shut, and their mouth pulled into a firm line.

"Things weren't supposed to be this way!" the kid shouted, moving to stand between the two of us squaring off, and I still couldn't tell from their voice whether it was a girl or boy. The kid pointed a finger at the short skeleton. "Sans! You know better than to threaten guests!"

"yeah, normally, but-"

"And you!" the kid whirled on me, and I caught Sans' anxious expression before looking back down, "You're supposed to be helping us stop whoever's killing the Monsters, not kill _more_ of them! What kind of person are you?!"

I looked back up at Sans, who had put a hand on his neck and was looking down rather than at either of us. Regardless of what kinds of messes he'd had in his head, he wasn't going to throw the first punch. I knew that, knew more about Sans than all but his closest friends, and he knew me the same way. He wouldn't swing first. If that was the case, then I could hold off, too. I exhaled, letting the power I'd been gathering fade away, and my shield and the glyphs in my staff faded with it. I'd still be able to pull up my shield at a moment's notice, but they didn't have to know that. "Sorry, kid. Just had a momentary disagreement with, uh, Sans, there."

"SANS!" Papyrus shouted, turning on his brother. "I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU MANAGED TO UPSET OUR GUEST WITH ONLY A FEW WORDS, BUT IF ANYBODY COULD DO IT, IT'S YOU! APOLOGIZE!"

Sans pulled back like his brother had actually hit him, then turned back to look at me again. I met his gaze, and he hurried looked away.

"Uh, actually…" I said, then swallowed, my mouth feeling dry. "That's actually more my fault, I think." The room all looked at me except for Mouse, who growled loudly. I tapped him lightly on the head with the side of my staff; I already knew Sans could be bad news, so he didn't need to remind me. "We had what's called a Soul Gaze. I Saw him, he Saw me, with capital letters on those Esses. Once you've had one with somebody, it's literally unforgettable, so enjoy remembering me forever, I guess. You can't have a second one with the same person, either, even if the years change them. I've been told my soul isn't the nicest place in the world to visit, and I think we both overreacted a little."

And I actually believed we had. So long as I didn't try stealing whatever that key represented, or tried to get past whatever he was guarding (which I guessed might _end the world_ , so there's a good enough reason not to mess with things)... I knew Sans was normally, well, depressed. Not so much of a fighter, except when he was pushed.

It wasn't a pleasant thought that a Soul Gaze with me pushed him damned close to that edge, but if he stepped back, I knew it'd take a lot to get him moving again.

"...so that's a soul gaze, huh?" Sans mused, looking back up to meet my eyes. I nodded, and he looked away. "always wondered what it was called."

"WHAT DID YOU SEE?" Papyrus asked, and Sans and I both winced.

Soul Gazes don't inherently share your whole, unaltered history, and no two people describe them the same way, but I got the feeling Sans wouldn't want me spouting off about the details of his soul any more than I wanted him going off about mine.

"Enough to know that neither of us want to talk about it," I said evenly.

Thomas chuckled, and I shot him a nasty look. He'd Seen my soul, and I'd seen the monster of the White Court trapped in his. Our mother had somehow managed to leave each of us one last message in each other's souls, which is a memory I'd thought back to plenty since I'd Seen it, it being the only time I'd seen her alive or heard her voice. It makes blood work and paternity tests pretty pointless if it's etched into the very essence of who you are that you're family. As quite possibly the only living member of my family, I'd do just about anything to keep Thomas safe, and he'd do the same.

Of course, that didn't mean he was above a laugh at my expense. The other side of being a brother, I guess.

"It's a rush to see it all go by that quickly, Burger King palace and all, isn't it?" Thomas asked with a shit-eating grin. "I could see people taking a swing at you after going through your soul, Harry."

Sans' skullface actually managed a _blink_ , which made me blink in turn. "burger king? i saw a lot of numbers and data, but not a lot of cheeseburgers. you've had one before, too?"

"Everybody goes through it differently," I cut in, swallowing my question to Thomas about whether he was being serious about Burger King or not. "I See people's souls as places, and I've heard others describe the experience through music or even smell. If you Saw reports, or whatever, then that's how you experience a Soul Gaze. Unless you're looking into the eyes of a Wizard, or you go through it all the time with other Monsters, then don't expect it every time you lock eyes with anybody."

Sans' eyes went wide, and he looked back down at the kid standing between us.

"Just… stop!" The kid's clenched fists shook harder. "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" The kid pointed at me, tears starting to form in those almost-shut eyes, "You're supposed to come in and teach us everything we need to know so we can protect ourselves! You're not supposed to start fights, you're supposed to end them!"

I set my staff onto the island counter in the middle of the room and raised my hands, a gesture of peace; I wasn't going to start anything with a child, or a girl, and for all I knew this kid was both. Either was a good enough reason to put my guns away, and waterworks made me ten kinds of uncomfortable no matter who was crying. "I'm sorry, kid. We're not fighting, see? Just a misunderstanding, that's all."

"yeah. didn't know we'd be meeting somebody new, especially over dinner… too bad about the meal. i guess we had a missed steak," Sans said to the kid.

Everybody took a moment to confirm what we'd heard, everybody but Papyrus. He went from curious to furious in the time it takes buildings to combust around me. "SANS! IF YOUR PUNS ARE GOING TO START FIGHTS, YOU NEED TO STOP TELLING THEM!"

"what?" Sans asked with his regular smile. "i just wanted some peanuts from the pantry. i didn't know there was a risk of anything being a-salted."

The kid just sighed and rubbed the bridge of their nose with two fingers, a very adult move from somebody their age. I wondered where they'd learned it from, or if they were just copying what I'd done earlier when I realized there wasn't necromancy in the house. That I knew of.

"I'm just glad we didn't start anything," I said back. "Last time I got in a fight and something unexpected happened, my left hand got fried." I wiggled my gloved left hand's fingers as best I could at Sans. "I'm all right, now."

There was a silent beat.

"ba-dum, tish," Sans vocalized, the sound remarkably accurate to a drumset.

"HUMAN!" Papyrus cried out, horrified. "DON'T ENCOURAGE HIM!"

"i don't think he's all bad if he finds me… humerus," Sans joked, and I chuckled at the bad pun.

"NYEH!" Papyrus threw his mittened hands up in surrender and walked away towards a cabinet, where he started pulling out plates, then a drawer for silverware. It wouldn't surprise me if the cutlery was made of real silver.

"We alright?" I asked the shorter skeleton, who sighed.

"...got a few questions, but for now, i think we're ok," he said, and I couldn't answer him before a slice of pie was shoved into my hands, a fork planted like a victory flag in the middle of the generous slice.

"DINNER MAY BE LATE, BUT GUESTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME." The skeleton squinted and leaned into my face, and I had to look away to avoid looking him in his own eye sockets. "EVEN ONES WHO TELL PUNS LIKE YOU, HUMAN."

"Personal space," I reminded him, handing off my pie to Thomas. The skeleton leaned back away and got me another plate, and I could almost feel the annoyance leaking off him like magical power. Knowing what I did about these Monsters, maybe I _did_ feel something like that.

"Frisk!" I heard Asgore's shout from the hallway, "Is Frisk safe?!"

"Back here!" Thomas called, and I stepped alongside the island counter to make room for the incoming host, Mouse at my side, still rumbling quietly like the Blue Beetle's engine on a bad day.

I could hear the heavy footsteps racing for the few seconds it took for Asgore to enter the room, and the King practically fell over Thomas, who sidled up to the wall with the pie held guarded at his chest, out of the huge monster's way as the King fell to one knee before the kid, gentle gauntleted paws lifting the kid's arms, lifting the kid's eyelids open to check them. "Are you hurt, anywhere at all?"

The kid quickly looked away and backed up a step, holding one arm in the other. "M'fine. Nothing happened."

The gentle giant exhaled a huge breath in relief and the kid almost completely disappeared into his arms in an equally huge hug. Given the golden armor, I wasn't sure how comfortable that was. I heard heavy footsteps coming up the hallway, possibly Undyne coming to verify everything wasn't on fire.

"YOUR HIGHNESS! WELCOME HOME!" Papyrus called happily, holding up a plate. "WE HAVE CINNAMON-BUTTERSCOTCH PIE, AND I'M GOING TO MAKE SPAGHETTI FOR OUR SECOND DINNER!"

"Daaaaaaad," the kid whined, and I pointedly looked away.

Like I'd said, I never knew my Mom, and Dad died when I was young. Haven't exactly had the chance to whine like that in a long, long time, and seeing other families sometimes made me uncomfortable.

"Drop the child, Dreemurr," Toriel said sternly, and saw her, arms crossed, filling the hall doorway.

Asgore froze, and I saw him slowly, carefully remove his arms and stand, slouched like he'd come home six hours after curfew. "Toriel," he said carefully, eyes glued to the ground, "I merely wished to ensure that Frisk was safe."

"Frisk was with me," she said curtly. "That's as safe as any child could be."

"...Of course," Asgore agreed solemnly.

"Perhaps you should relieve Undyne," the queen said. It clearly wasn't a request. "She has had a long day, and even if the hoards aren't pounding on the gates, a guard should stand ready."

"I…" The king looked around, then gave the room at large a short bow. "I will guard the front. Be well, be safe."

Toriel barely stepped out of Asgore's way as he passed, scowling. When I heard the large front door shut, her face brightened into a smile. "How is your homework coming, my child?" she asked, suddenly cheery, directing her attention first to the kid, Frisk.

"'S done, mostly," Frisk said quietly. "Just a few more reports for the U.N., and some multiplication tables."

She sighed, putting a paw on Frisk's head and rubbing it, gently. "You do not have to do these reports, my child. You may still enjoy your childhood, yet."

The kid's expression didn't change, just a blank wall of nothing, and there was no response. She sighed, then leaned down and gave the kid another hug. Unlike with Asgore, the kid's arms came up and around her, as best as they could given the size difference, and she released the kid to stand.

Still no expression on the kid's face, though.

I filed it away alongside the hundred other signs that the kid wasn't as hunky dory as the news seemed to say. Given that newspapers had articles with updates on the family at all, I could understand at least part of why, and having it confirmed that they were a member of the _united freaking nations_ didn't help the "still a child" vibes Toriel seemed to expect the kid to have.

I'd had a rough enough time growing up to know that face. I'd worn it a few times myself in the bad years.

I cleared my throat, still just standing there with an untouched pie, which I placed back onto the counter. The focus of the room broke from just the two of them, and Toriel turned that smile back my way.

"Wizard?" She said with a curious lilt. "I do not believe we have been formally introduced. I am Toriel. Welcome to my home."

"Dresden," I said back, offering her my hand, which she shook. "Harry Dresden."

"This little one," she gushed, gently prodding the kid forward. "Is Frisk."

Frisk nodded, not meeting my eyes. Hell, I wouldn't want to either, after everything. I nodded back. It's an acceptable quarter bow in Fairy culture, or something, so it's fine enough for me as a form of acknowledgement.

"I'M PAPYRUS!" The volume-challenged bone-maiden proclaimed, hand over his (and I was pretty sure it was a he, this time) chest. "ROYAL GUARD IN TRAINING, AND ROYAL CHEF IN THE MAKING!"

"sans," the skeleton's voice floated over the counter from where he leaned against one of the few walls not covered completely in cabinet doors. "we've met."

"Right," I said, nodding to each in turn. "This is Thomas, a friend of mine," who nodded to the room at large, "and Mouse, my pet wooly mammoth."

Mouse's lips pulled away from his teeth, and I flicked him on the nose. He gave me as nasty a look as a dog can give a man, then pressed firmly into my side.

Toriel noticed immediately, and she pushed Frisk half a step behind her. "Is he not trained?" She asked evenly.

"He is," I said, rubbing his ears, but his mood didn't change. "I guess he's still upset over, uh…" I trailed off a moment. "Sans and I had a little disagreement. 'S'all better now, but Mouse doesn't seem to want to accept that."

Toriel made a small "mmm" noise, then walked Frisk the long way around the island counter, taking a slice of pie from Papyrus as she passed, moving to sit to the kid's right at the table. "Do I even want to know?"

"probably not," Sans answered her.

"About the Necromancers-" I started, but Toriel shot me a nasty look from behind Frisk's back, giving her head a firm shake.

"Whatever threats the world may hold, we are safe in our home," she insisted, then looked up as clanking footsteps sounded from the entryway. "Undyne," she greeted as the Silver Knight joined us. Papyrus handed her some pie.

I made to move toward the table, but Mouse growled louder, and I huffed, exasperated. "Thomas, can you take Mouse for a short walk around the perimeter, see if there's anything getting ready to throw down?"

Thomas glanced at my staff, then at Sans, who shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Let me know what you find out."

We shared a glance, and had a short non-verbal conversation, something we'd started picking up after I'd asked him to have yet another random girl leave my basement apartment. Perks of dealing with a White Court vampire.

I knew that look he gave me. It meant, "You sure?"

I huffed shortly through my nose. "I'll be fine."

A tilt to the side, half a nod. "Call out if you need anything, and I'll come running."

A slight, blink-and-you'd-miss-it nod back. "Count on it."

He whistled lightly to Mouse, who looked torn. I nodded toward Thomas, and Mouse chuffed, then followed him, tail firmly between his legs. He didn't even chuff at Sans on his way out, so I'd guessed he'd finally realized we weren't going to have a problem.

"nice dog," Sans offered, remaining by the dining room door. "seems smart."

"Smarter than me," I admitted, "but don't tell him that. He's got enough of an ego as it is."

Sans chuckled softly, and Undyne looked between Toriel quietly going over reports with Frisk and Thomas' retreating form. She stepped lightly past Papyrus, who'd pulled out a large pot and was pouring dry noodles into it, over to me, which in platemail amounted to a lot of heavy clanging despite her half-hearted attempt at moving slowly. "Harry?" She asked around a bite of pie. "Do you think it'd be OK if I asked your friend about that sweet Kukri he showed off earlier?"

"Uh, probably?"

She shoved the rest of the pie into her huge, terrifying maw, then swallowed and cleared her throat. "I'm gonna to go do laps around the house. Throw up a flare if anybody needs me."

Toriel gave a light wave, not bothering to turn away from the reports before returning her free hand to the top of Frisk's head.

Undyne nodded, then turned and walked smartly for a few steps before breaking into a sprint. I heard the massive front door slam, but nobody else jumped. I guessed it must have been a common occurrence.

"Are you going to join us or not?" Frisk asked from the table, and I looked back at the two of them. Toriel gave me a light smile, but Frisk just had that blank, lidded stare directed at my chest. I glanced at Sans, who shrugged again. I grabbed the slice of pie I'd set down and took a seat across from the both of them at the large, round table.

On closer inspection, there were a lot of papers scattered across the table, some in ink, others in a more crooked scrawl in pencil, and a few more that I recognized as worksheets with jagged edges, like they'd been torn out of a workbook from some school or other.

"bro, i think you should put water in that before you try to cook it," I heard Sans say, but I tuned the rest of their conversation out, focusing on Frisk, who was already finishing the pie in front of them, the fork in their left hand. Toriel, I noticed, had stopped petting the kid and had picked up a pencil in her left paw, too. Huh. Guess everybody around here was a lefty.

I tried stretching my hand. It was sore, a side effect of all the shielding I'd done earlier. I sighed, leaning back in my chair.

I closed my eyes, just for a moment.

"Dresden?"

I shot up, blinking away the spots from my eyes in the suddenly-too-bright kitchen's dining area. "What, what happened?"

Toriel gave me a small smile, and I saw that she'd put on some glasses with purple frames in the time I'd closed my eyes. It'd felt like only a moment, but I knew it must have been longer, if she'd managed to leave to go get them.

I shook my head. Damned spots. I blinked a few hundred more times.

Frisk ambled back over to the table to sit back down as I pushed the pie aside, rubbing my forehead. I chuckled lightly. "Guess the day's been even longer than I thought. How long was I out?"

"Barely a moment," Toriel responded, a hint of amusement in her tone. "Your pie must be getting cold. Eat a bite, I'm sure it will help."

I waved it off, rubbing my eyes, rubbing away the spots. "Sorry. What?"

"The pie, Harry." Have a bite of the pie. "Would you like me to heat it up?" Just have a few bites, you'll feel right as rain in no time.

I shook my head, then picked up the fork from beside the plate and had a bite.

The effect was immediate. The haze faded and I felt… good. Awake, almost buzzed. Better than I had in days, like I'd eaten a full night's rest in just the first bite. I blinked again, this time more in surprise than anything else, taking in the whole kitchen again.

Papyrus was standing by the sink set into the counter diagonal from the entrance we'd come in from, filling his pot with water. Sans was looking around the room, before his eyes fell suddenly and heavily on Toriel, and he stood up straight. I looked back at Toriel, who beamed at me enjoying the pie, and I saw Frisk, smirking slightly, picking the pencil back up, sitting back down on her left, closest to the windows. I'd sat across from them, the rest of the kitchen on my left.

I looked back down at the pie, then hurriedly had another bite, and another, rushing to finish it. I barely had time to swallow, the cinnamon warring with the butterscotch on my taste buds, the pie melting in my mouth with a long forgotten feeling of warmth, of… home.

"Wow," I said dumbly, setting the fork down. So that was Monster food, putting my own potions to shame. "Wow."

"I am glad you find my pie to your liking," Toriel said with a smile. "It is a recipe I have practiced for many hundreds of years. I have had few complaints."

"You can say that-"

"Again," Frisk interrupted, the smirk gone. The kid's face was blank, just like earlier, those eyes almost completely closed. I couldn't tell if it was a longstanding habit, or they just didn't like to see, or hell, maybe the kid was blind. "I had a few questions I was hoping you'd answer, Mr. Dresden."

I blinked one last time, then pulled my chair in and sniffed. "What'd you want to know now?" I said, feeling unnaturally frustrated.

The kid's eyes widened for a moment, then she opened his mouth, then closed it suddenly. She looked up at Toriel, who seemed offended I'd been so snippy.

"Sorry," I said shortly. "Just coming down off that pie. Made my own Pick-Me-Up potion look like amature hour. What I wouldn't give to have one of those after every day I'd had like today, let me tell you."

"Er, of course," Toriel nodded. "One moment." She started to stand, then paused for a moment. She stood up fully. "Dresden, would you like a glass of wine?"

Frisk's hand jumped to hers, held it tight. "I'll be alright," I said, noting the move. "I already had a few earlier. Any more and I won't be fit to drive."

Apparently Toriel didn't miss the kid's move either. "I will only have a single glass, my child." She squeezed the kid's hand, and he squeezed back, before she stepped away, past Sans and into the dining room. Maybe they had one of those fancy chilled wine rooms in there.

Wait, I hadn't had _any_ brews at Mac's.

"What are the seven laws of magic?" Frisk asked, quick as a gunslinger on the draw.

I looked over at the dining room door, where Sans was leaned against the wall again, head down. Papyrus whistled as he stirred his pot with huge, swirling motions. I crossed my arms, not sure how I felt about the kid asking about them. "Don't kill, don't change people's shapes, don't mess with people's heads or go poking around in them, don't bind the dead, don't mess with time, and don't ask about the Outer Gates. Why?"

The kid bit their lower lip, and I blinked. I'd thought this was a he, wait, she, no-

"What happens when you break them?" quickfire question number two rattled off.

"The Wardens come, and they have a trial." I rubbed my eyes. "Sentences aren't lenient. Not except in very, very special cases."

The kid tapped the pencil in their left hand a few times on the table.

Then Toriel re-entered the room with a bottle of wine, and Frisk was suddenly angry, and broke the pencil in half and threw it at the window, then folded their arms across their chest and stared out it, every bit the child throwing a tantrum as I'd ever seen.

"Frisk!" Toriel called, setting the bottle down as she strode over to us. "What is wrong, my child?"

"Everything!" the kid shouted, then slid their hands across the table, throwing the papers and spare pencils everywhere. "My friends are dying and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it!"

"Language, my child!" Toriel gasped, almost instinctively, a hand over her mouth. She reached out to Frisk, but the kid stood up in their chair and got louder.

"Nothing's going the way it was supposed to, don't you get it?!" The kid shouted, and the volume just kept going up. "No matter how hard we try, we can't _fix_ _ **anything**_! My friend the Monster Kid is dead, Ms. Muffet is dead, half the people from Snowdin were killed all at once and there _wasn't anything we could do about it!_ Not a hundred warnings, not a thousand different- **NOTHING WORKS!** And we're running out of time! We're always, _always_ running out of time now!"

"Kid," I tried to say, as tears started welling up in Toriel's eyes, one hand still over her mouth, the other reaching out but not touching the child, but I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"I worked _so hard_ to get us this far, and it's still just _falling apart_! It's like-" the kid's screams died, became the softest whisper, "...it's like nothing we do matters. It never, never mattered."

"Oh, my child," Toriel gasped, taking the kid into a great hug, tears streaming down her furred face, leaving little wet lines.

"You're wrong, you know," I said, keeping my tone almost conversational.

Toriel turned to see me, playing with my fork, and I just barely saw the slits of Frisk's squinty eyes from her side.

"What?" the kid asked, and that emotionless expression was mirrored by the dead word.

I hated it when kids felt like that. When innocents, when _anybody_ felt like their world was falling apart. I'd been there before, and I'd decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to stand for it. Not now, not ever.

"That thing you said? About how nothing we do matters?" I said, pushing the chair back to stand. I stretched, then stepped over to the cabinets next to the sink, and pulled a glass out of one of them. I chalked it up to one of those weird after-effects of the Soul Gaze that I knew where Sans would keep his glasses. I filled it from the sink as I continued to speak. "You'd be wrong."

I took a drink, then set the glass down and folded my arms, leaning against the counter.

"Life is tough. Sometimes, I feel like that. Like the whole world is falling apart, like there's nothing I can do to stop it, like I can't possibly stop what's coming." I inhaled deeply, then let it out. "Been a lot of those the last few years. It's terrifying, knowing that there are things out there that want to eat your face, isn't it?" I snorted. "Couple years back, I remember I was getting death threats from a Warlock, what we call a Wizard gone bad, who was going to burst my heart right out of my chest, and part of me just wanted to crawl into the deepest, darkest hole I could find until it all went away. Sometimes I feel like there's nothing I can do, mystical hoo-doo and friends nowhere to be found, and there's something horrible I should be running from, that there's no chance in Hell I'd be able to face."

I sniffed. "Then I get out of bed, throw on my duster, and I go out and meet it anyway."

I took an arm away from my chest and pointed it at the kid. "You've had a couple long days, at least. I oughta know, I've been through a few myself. And I'm going to see a lot more before I'm through." I re-folded my arms. "I'm not some superhero who can whisk away all the problems of the world, kid. But some days, all that stands between people and the darkness are a couple people who refuse to just stand by and watch. I'm guessing with those 'thousand warnings' that you've been trying your best thus far to be one of those people."

I had another drink of water.

"You're just a kid. Sure, you've somehow helped crack open some barrier, and you're somehow on the _U.N._ , but you're still just a kid. You shouldn't even have to _think_ about this kind of crap, not for a long time coming. But you're stuck seeing friends go down anyway, and you feel like there's not much to do." I nodded. "I've felt that way." I looked back over at them, giving the kid as strong a look as I could through Toriel's side. "So you do what you can, help who you can, and try to keep your head down while the adults handle it. And now?" I smiled grimly. "I'm no superhero, but I'm here, kid. So if nobody else'll listen to those thousand warnings, throw a few of them my way."

I made my way back to the table, reached into my jacket, and took out my notepad and pencil, flipping it to a fresh page. I sat down, set the pad in front of me, and tapped my pencil on it twice. "If you know what these guys who're attacking your friends look like, or anything like that, now'd be the time to bring me up to speed."

I waited for somebody in the room to respond, hoping the kid would be willing to say a few things, even just to try to feel better after feeling like they hadn't been able to do anything at all.

Toriel spoke first, still partly in shock. "What could you possibly expect us to know that we have not already tried to use to protect our people?"

"You're thinking about it wrong," I said with a mirthless half-smile. "I'm wondering what _I_ might know, or could find out, that'll help based on what you know."

The kid exhaled into Toriel's side, then held her a little tighter. "I can tell you that it isn't Monsters starting fights to the death out there. It's Wizards. They're the ones killing my friends to steal their souls. They're doing it to make themselves more powerful."


	11. Getting Some Traction

There I was, ready to get some solid answers. Maybe this kid actually knew enough to get me on track, to put the threats we were up against into perspective. I stretched my right hand around the pencil, rolling it to loosen my wrist to take some notes, and I nodded to the kid.

Toriel wasn't having it.

"Absolutely _not!_ " she shouted, holding the kid closer. The kid flinched, but buried their head further into the Monster Queen's fur. "If you require information, I am sure that Sans could provide it." She sniffed, taking a glance around the mess that Frisk had made of the papers across the table. "It is late. Though it is the weekend, we have all had a difficult day. The worries of tomorrow can wait for those younger than sixteen. If you wish to stay, Sans can show you to a guest room. Papyrus?" The skeleton in question turned a dial on the stove, probably turning the heat off. "A word, when you're finished with that. Good night, Mr. Dresden," she finished with a sense of finality.

"But mom-" Frisk said, muffled by her fur again, but she cut him off.

"No buts," she insisted. "You've had a long day, and you must _rest_."

"i got it, kid," Sans said from behind Toriel. I hadn't seen him move. "hold off for now. you can decide again tomorrow, alright?"

"...fine." The kid sighed.

Toriel kept the kid close, lifting the little form into her arms easily. Given her size, it wasn't surprising she had that kind of strength, but it was how closely she held the kid that stuck out to me. She held 'em close, managing to stroke the kid's hair with a paw even as she nodded to Sans, then me, and walked briskly away. Adopted or otherwise, she was scared for her kid. I could rest easy on the kid feeling like they belonged here, at least.

Less so on feeling fine with the threats to the kid, and the rest of the Monsters, because of those Wizards.

I dropped my pencil and rubbed my face with my good hand, wiping away some of the evening grime. Sans pulled out the chair Toriel had been sitting in, pushing the too-close one the kid was using to the side, and gave me that never-ending skeleton grin he always wore as he sat down. That grin, I remembered from the Gaze, that he often wore.

I've never taken the time to study just how deep the effects of a Soul Gaze are, but they tend to leave little ghost impressions of a person like that sometimes, leaving you knowing little details you'd need a long time to pick up otherwise.

"I AM TERRIBLY SORRY, HUMAN DRESDEN," Papyrus said, his voice catching somewhat. "I FEAR I HAVE OVER BOILED THE SPAGHETTI NOODLES. THEY ARE NO LONGER AS STIFF AS WHEN I USUALLY SERVE THEM."

"isn't that how they're supposed to turn out, paps?" Sans asked his brother.

"NOT ACCORDING TO UNDYNE, BUT QUEEN TORIEL ASSURES ME THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO ENJOY THE DISH, SO PERHAPS THEY WILL STILL BE OK. HUMAN?" Papyrus asked again, carrying the boiling pot back over to the sink. He reached into another cabinet I couldn't see, and pulled out a pasta strainer, and poured in the noodles as he spoke. The thin wooden spoon he was stirring with fell in with them. "I HOPE YOU ARE NOT INSULTED IF I ASK YOU TO SERVE YOURSELF. I… HAVE… THINGS… TO GO CHECK ON. SMALL HUMAN CHILD THINGS, AND LARGE MONSTER QUEEN THINGS." He put the pot down on an unused burner and quickly ran from the room.

I looked at Sans, who shrugged.

A hanging cabinet on the wall next to the sink creaked open somewhat, and I glanced at it, then back at Sans. He'd closed his eyes and leaned back. Well. I'd let him nap while I ate. I couldn't fault him for it after my own little display. Glass houses and all that.

Sure enough, the cabinet that had opened had plates and bowls and things in it, so I grabbed a bowl and, when I realized that the wooden spoon wasn't good to pick up noodles with, a handful of spaghetti (don't look at me like that, I washed my hands).

"Any sauces?" I asked Sans, but he just shrugged again. Maybe they had some hidden somewhere in that massive pantry, but if he wasn't helping, I wasn't going spelunking for a little extra flavor. I took the bowl back to my seat, sit. I licked the fork I ate pie with clean, and had a few bites of the plain noodles.

They were the single least flavorful things I've eaten in my entire life, and we're including ice chips and snow in that, but they were still… something else. At first, I'd thought that they were calories, nothing more, but I felt more full even after just a few bites. Acting on a hunch, I closed my eyes and sniffed the spaghetti, concentrating on finding any magical energies. The results were inconclusive, but maybe it was just because it'd been thrown together, especially at the end. I still ate the whole plate, seeing as it was filling and I'd skipped lunch, then took the dishes to the sink and left them there.

Sans cracked one eye open as I sat back down. "how'd you like my brothers' cooking?"

"Bland, but filling. Maybe I should have raided the fridge or pantry for something to put on it."

Sans closed both eyes and nodded, grin widening. "good to hear his spaghetti is improving. i'm glad you had some that was edible."

I took that at face value as he sat up and opened his eyes. He'd gone from completely out to completely up in that single move. I wasn't jealous of the trick.

"so..." he began slowly, "necromancers? they sounds like the kind of people who'll _raise_ the stakes."

I chuckled. I could appreciate a few bad jokes. "I'm not sure that's what their parents meant when they told them to _make some friends_. They turn corpses into zombies, and they can force ghosts to come back from the other side, too," I said. I grimaced, trying to think of more I knew off the top of my head, but it wasn't much. "I'd need to do some research to be sure of much else. I was kind of hoping I'd get some more info from you guys, then go from there. These guys're walking all over the fifth law of magic, Thou Shalt Not Reach Beyond the Borders of Life, and they're strong enough not to worry about hiding it."

Sans shrugged. "well, don't be _crypt_ -ic. what do you want to know?"

I pulled the chair in a little closer and picked up the pencil, the fresh page of my notepad still waiting for me. "Even if we didn't know about the Necromancers, the kid, Frisk, said it was Wizards who were killing you guys, and it was to get more powerful? Why would the kid say that?"

Sans' smile fell a bit. Even after having seen it a few times on his brother, the shifting bone structure made little uncomfortable tingles crawl up my spine. "something that we've been dealing with since before monsters were trapped underground. when humans kill monsters, the monsters turn into dust. that dust is like a steroid, for the body and mind, but it does nasty stuff to you. makes it easier to kill more people. i think they forget they were ever people in the first place."

I swallowed, but noted it down all the same. "Sounds like using black magic. You do a little, and suddenly it doesn't seem so bad to do more, until you're raising the dead and trying to dominate people's minds. You have to be careful walking along that fine line, because the first step off is a real doozy."

Sans looked away, like he was remembering something, and his grin pulled to one side. "those both sound like things against those laws i keep hearing about."

I nodded. "The connection isn't a coincidence. I mean, magic is a beautiful aspect of the best things in life, like a force of creation, a force of art. Every time somebody breaks those laws… it's like smearing blood and crap on an original Da Vinci painting. The world has a little less of that beauty, and it stains you as much as you stain the world. The way I've been told, the only ones you can save are the ones you catch before they break those laws and twist themselves so much there's nothing left to save." I snorted. "It's bullshit. Kids, young kids, who make mistakes, already so far gone you can't pull 'em back? I'll believe that when I see it."

"be careful what you wish for," Sans said quietly.

"Hmm?"

"don't worry about it."

I sighed, then went and grabbed my water glass from the counter. I filled it again, not sure why I was so parched.

"can i ask you something?" Sans asked as I sat back down.

"Just so long as we can get back to the details of those Wizards some time today."

He nodded, more to himself than to me. "what did you see?"

I took a deep breath, thinking about it. "Alright, before we do this, you need to understand," I told him quietly. "It's one of those mirrors that doesn't lie. You might not like what you hear."

"and you'll tell me the truth about what you saw?" he asked back, quieter this time. He was looking down, sort of like how he had in the Gaze.

I cleared my throat forcefully, and the lights in his eyes shot up to meet mine. "It's your soul, Sans. Would I lie about something that important?"

He looked to the side, more thoughtful than distant. "...depends." He met my eyes and his grin widened. "would you think it was funny?"

I blinked, considering his question.

Apparently it was for a little too long, because he continued, "you might joke about what you saw. but you'd tell me the truth if i asked. ...why am i so sure about that?"

I raised an eyebrow. "You saw my soul, Sans. You know things about me even I'm not sure of."

"...you want to know what i saw?" he asked. "like a trade?"

"Not really. I'd rather live life not knowing exactly why I freak people out, you know?"

"i guess. so…" he smiled wider. "how about that soul i've got?"

I told him. I started with the hallway, the faded gold, the dust in the air, all the windows I'd seen, everything, not leaving out any details. When I told him about the ketchup he drank, about the red line across his chest, he took my glass to the sink to refill it, and I waited for him. He was probably mulling it over, trying to decide what metaphorical meaning it had to his life. I waited. I could understand needing time to think about it.

He finally sat back down, didn't say a word. Just waved at me to continue.

So I did. I told him about the door, and I slowed down for a moment… then told him about the void behind him. The endless, all-consuming void he seemed to be trying to keep me, or I guess anyone, from diving into.

"...and that's when a ton of massive skull-things, like broken-in-half dog skulls, just appeared around you, like some kind of wall for that door in the middle of the room. You pointed at me, and then they all fired some kind of energy beams, tearing me to shreds.

"Then it ended. And you splayed your fingers at me in real life, which is why I freaked out, because you'd done it exactly the same way as when those skulls had appeared." I finished, then took a drink from the glass he'd refilled.

He nodded, tired. "yeah, i could see how that wouldn't seem like a good place to stand, with me like that. sorry, for what it's worth."

I waved my gloved hand at him, leaning back against the high back of the chair. "Don't worry about it. No harm, no foul."

We let the room fall into silence again, me drinking water, him thinking over what I'd said. It continued for several minutes. I didn't rush him. We had all night, if it came to that.

He nodded to himself, then clapped his bony hands and rubbed them together, the sound of clattering bones sending another shiver up my spine in the cool, empty air. "alright, i think that about covers my questions about me. i've still got a few about you, though."

"Hit me," I offered, dropping the pencil from as high as I could reach, watching it fall dramatically onto the notepad and bounce off. I swore lightly as it bounced off the table, and I reached under to grab it.

" **You've killed a lot of monsters over the years, haven't you?** " Sans asked, voice low and dangerous.

I picked up the pencil and looked back over the table at Sans as I came up, his eye sockets blank and empty. His smile hadn't changed, but it felt more sinister without the glow to back it up. "I'm guessing you mean surface monsters, seeing as you guys haven't been topside for that long. Uh, yes," I admitted. "Most of them were trying to kill and eat me, or hurt my friends."

The lights blinked back on in his eyes, and he sighed, looking down the middle of the table. "sorry. old habit." He looked back up. "what i'm worried about is exactly like what you said you were told to watch out for. you kill a lot of monsters, it gets easier to kill over time. eventually, you stop seeing people, and start seeing obstacles... or notches on your belt."

He looked deep into my eyes, those little flames narrowing into little pinpricks of light.

"it's not the kind of path somebody should be walking, if you know what I mean."

I stared back. Yeah, I felt the little tingles and crawls, but now that I knew he was trying to put me on edge, it was easier to realize he was responsible for them, magically or otherwise. I'd put good money on him doing it on purpose, too. "I know what you mean. And if there was any other way to keep my friends and Chicago safe, I'd be doing that instead." I shook my head, then put a little whisper of willpower into the pentacle I wore around my neck, under my shirt. It glowed faintly, not really enough to be seen through my shirt, and the creepy feeling passed. "I'm going to keep protecting this town, Sans. If that means I have to go toe to toe with the nastiest customers this side of Hell, then that's what I'm going to do. These things don't play patty cake or collect bottle caps in their spare time. They kill people. And yeah, sometimes I have to kill them back to get them to stop. That doesn't mean I have to like it. And if I ever did like it, and I start turning into one of those monsters?" I waved my arm at him. "Go find my friend, Michael Carpenter. Ask the church where he is. He'll help you stop me."

Sans' grin widened. "i might just do that."

"Satisfied?" I asked him, irritated. "Have I passed your little test?"

He nodded. "i think we'll be ok."

"Great. Wonderful. Fantastic." I spun the pencil in my hand. "Tell me more about the people killing your people."

His grin went back to its normal size, then drooped a bit more. "i had a pun i was going to make about paper before we moved on from tests, but it's _really_ bad..."

"I'm sure it was terrible," I agreed, "but-"

I blinked. Tear-able.

Sans blinked back. His grin widened back to normal. "ha. gotcha."

"Forget it," I said, shaking my head again. Damn it. "The threats to your people come first."

"right. well, there are at least two of them that we're sure of, and one more we think is involved."

I waited for him to continue.

"one of them is big, like a brick wall, and wears a khaki-grey trench coat and fedora." He nodded to me. "he's not as tall as you, but he's wider, and a little fatter. he's got sideburns and a long face, and he's almost as pale as i am. he killed a few monsters that got curious about why he was watching them so closely."

I wrote down the description in little bullet points, trying hard not to think about it, or I'd get too angry to write everything down. "The next one?"

"an old man, medium height, long thin hair… what else… his skin is really loose and pale, with liver spots, and he walks around stiff, like his bones grew in wrong. he seems to hang around the first guy alot, too. out of all of them, i think he's the one who's going out of his way to fight us."

I noted the details, then underlined Liver Spots for emphasis. "And the third person?"

"i haven't seen him much," Sans admitted. "he tends to show up, look around, then leaves without saying anything. no matter where he goes, he always has a big black robe with a hood, so you can't see his face."

"Wait, a huge black robe?" I asked, pencil stopping mid-word. Just like I'd see at Morty's house. "Egh. We've met. And it's a she, not a he."

Sans shook his head. "it's a guy. trust me on this."

"No, it can't be," I insisted. "I used my Wizard's Sight. I can promise you, it's a girl."

Sans looked to the side again, thinking. "and _i_ can promise _you_ , i'm talking about a guy. so maybe we're both right."

"I'm not following."

"there might be two of them," he said evenly.

I huffed, but I wrote it down nonetheless. "If there _are_ two of them, then that's at least four people- check that, _five_ people I'm worried about now wandering Chicago, at least. If you're not counting the Ghoul, which I guess I should, so make that six." I chuckled hopelessly. "At least six people I need to worry about tearing up Chicago. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!"

"what's that supposed to mean?" Sans asked, otherwise unperturbed at the outburst.

"Alice In Wonderland," I muttered back, then wondered about it. "You ever have a little girl fall down that mountain and come back up?"

"nobody came out from under there except frisk," Sans answered, but I'd already started waving him off.

"Nevermind. If they never take those black hoods off, it means the hitter at Morty's place, who was a girl wearing that same outfit, _wasn't_ the same woman who hit me outside Mac's pub. She had a doctor's get-up, and so did her pet Ghoul."

"ghoul?" Sans prompted.

"Supernatural hitters for hire, more or less. They look human until they change, then their mouths stretch out twice as long and their hands turn into bone claws. You'll know one when you see it, but not unless it takes off its human glamour."

"if you say so," Sans agreed easily.

I heard somebody coming up the hallway again, Thomas and Mouse back from their walk.

"Harry," Thomas said from the doorway. He looked back and forth between me and Sans. "Doing a little better, are you?"

I nodded, then turned back to Sans. "Is there anything else you think we need to know, so we'll be ready for whatever we're up against?"

Sans chuckled softly. "just that things're shaping up to be a real shit-show," he said. "so nothing too out of the ordinary."

He stood up from the dining table and walked over the kitchen side of the room, closer to Mouse. I stood up quickly, just in case either of them might start something, but Sans just held his hand out for the dog to sniff. A couple sniffls later, and Mouse wagged his tail. Sans chuckled softly and scratched behind Mouse's ears, and the big pup let his tongue roll out, content.

"good to meet you, too, pal," Sans sighed. He turned back to me with that unending grin, and I headed over. "he's real smart, isn't he?"

"Of course he is. I'm just glad you two are on better terms."

Sans shook his head. "right. you two staying the night?"

Thomas and I exchanged glances, and I cleared my throat. "As nice as it is for you all to offer, I'd rather be at home tonight," I told him. "I still need to pick up a few things, and I need to meet with somebody tomorrow morning."

By somebody, I meant Bob. Hopefully he'd be back by now, waiting with Mister to tell me what he'd found out so I could compare it with my own experiences. And who knew? Maybe he'd have picked up something else useful that could help put the nail in this coffin.

Heh.

"Actually," I said out loud, "I've got another set of eyes on the streets on this one. If we're lucky, maybe it's just what we'll need to put a nail in this _coffin_." It was hard to stop myself from putting the emphasis on the word nail, but I'd pulled it off.

"heh," Sans agreed, then crossed his arms. "sounds like a real _bone-a-fied_ detective you've got working on this."

I laughed. "In more ways than you know, bonehead."

Thomas sighed. "Is this what we've got to put up with?" He asked Mouse. The two of them seemed to decide they were done with the comedy gold Sans and I were putting out there alongside the classics, and they left the room, back towards the Beetle out front.

"Be seeing you, Sans," I told the short skeleton.

"i'll keep an eyesocket out for you," he responded with a wave.

With the pleasantries dealt with, it was time to vamoose. I snagged my staff off the counter and headed out to join the others in the Beetle.

Miraculously, my car was still working.

Maybe somebody up there doesn't completely hate me.

"Did you tell them what they needed to hear?" Thomas asked, shifting in the passenger-side bucket seat.

"I think so."

I blinked a few times, thinking back to the reason I'd been called to their house in the first place, then I swore.

"Actually, I think I only told them a few things they needed to hear. Hell's bells, I completely forgot to tell them about the White Council!"

Thomas shook his head, and we drove on in silence.

Up until we arrived back at my apartment.

I exhaled sharply as I took it all in, a scene I'd become all too familiar with in the past day: flashing lights, police tape holding back reporters, and destruction all around. For once, I wasn't in the middle of it when it happened.

I pulled the Beetle off toward my normal parking spot, but the police line was in the way, so I just parked my car next to it and stumbled out, barely remembering to put the car in park before I did. I was caught in a daze, if only for a moment, and registered the sound of Thomas letting Mouse out of the back on his side. Thomas came closer and handed me my staff. I grit my teeth, exhaled sharply, and shook out the shields of my bracelet out of my jacket sleeve, just in case nasty things were waiting for us.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," I said, lifting the tape out of our way.

I had my police-business badge out the moment an officer started our way, but I was just waved along. Given that it wasn't somebody I recognized from the SI branch, I figured everybody had already learned it was my house, and they were expecting me.

I didn't acknowledge the reporters calling out my name. Not this time.

I didn't hear the words the officers said to me, either. I didn't quite push them out of the way, but they didn't really stop me, either. They stopped Mouse and Thomas near the entrance as I stepped down the stairs to my apartment, slowing as I took them, stepping over the shapes left behind.

The wards around Monster Manor were strong enough that I could feel them walking through, but mine aren't exactly easy to take apart, either. I'd built the magical barrier around my fortress like a single, unyielding wall of steel. There are no flaws to be exploited, no weak points to aim at, and no ways in or out without my permission, whether it's through the talisman I'd given Thomas or because I'd temporarily taken them down. Anyone and anything else would catch a face full of lightning, supercharged by the power lines that ran by my building.

Whoever had gotten through my wards hadn't bothered to take them down.

The shapes I'd stepped over were corpses, but I'd hazard a guess that they were dead before my defenses had gotten them. Whoever had done this, they didn't bother to try cracking my defenses like a safe. They'd just thrown walking corpses at it until the barrier came down.

The first clue that I was dealing with inhumanly strong undead, other than the corpses, was my front door. It's made of steel. It was also bent inwards, and I could recognize at least one of the dents as the imprint of a fist.

Before, my apartment was decorated in textures, with plenty of rugs around the old couch and with old movie posters alongside simple tapestries on the walls. I'd been particularly proud of the one with Leia next to Luke's leg, with Vader's helmet taking up most of the background.

It wasn't so nice with every single one of my possessions torn apart some way or other.

Nothing. Nothing was left untouched.

It took me a few moments of looking around at the destroyed bookcase Mister liked to lounge on, the shredded couch, my ice box thrown on its side, and everything scattered around haphazardly before I realized it:

Nothing was left untouched.

Which meant that my basement was also wide open. The trapdoor had been ripped off the hinges, and was currently sitting in my fireplace.

I didn't bother checking the bedroom. I ran straight down into my lab, where a girl in a white coat was taking photos of the hurricane that had passed through. Almost everything was shattered, broken, or hell, maybe some of it was even stolen. None of it mattered, and I even put the broken table in the middle of the room out of my mind.

It didn't take more than a second for me to search the floor, despite the mess, and the rage that had been boiling underneath my eyes turned into something a lot colder.

I shivered, looking up at the only shelf that hadn't been destroyed, where those two mounds of wax sat lazily next to the piles of romance novels, next to a conspicuously empty space.

Bob's skull was gone.


	12. Falling Down

Bob, the spirit of intellect, an encyclopedia of knowledge, one of my first mentors and closest friends, had been stolen from me.

His skull isn't just some keepsake, or even just a fancy home. No, his skull is etched with dozens of runes of binding, and he is bound and beholden to the holder of his miniature prison. From what I understand, he accepts the situation because it's also a bomb shelter against the magical entities he's pissed off over the course of his extensive lifetime, spent learning things he wasn't supposed to know. I've said it before: if knowledge is power, then Bob is a magical heavyweight.

Check that.

Bob is, pound for intellectual pound, on par with any ten wizards in what he knows about how magic works, including about how it may change over time. It probably comes from having served wizards in their research since the dark ages, each living for potentially several hundred years, and several of them Dark enough to have managed to break each and every one of the Laws of Magic in some new and exciting way.

I'd inherited Bob's skull from my first mentor, and the man who had pulled me from the orphanage: Justin DuMorne. A man I'd murdered with magic in self defense when he'd sent an Outsider to kill me first because I refused to let him turn me into a thrall, a mental meat puppet.

All I had kept to remember that nightmare was Bob himself, who I'd pulled from the burning wreckage of Justin's house.

He was my second real friend since my dad died. I'd had him since I was 16.

And he was gone.

"Are you OK, sir?" the camera woman asked, and I pulled myself out of my daze long enough to look back at her, with her long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. "Do you need me to call you someone to help you back upstairs?"

I thought back to when I'd asked Bob where Justin had picked him up. Who Justin had gotten him from.

"Sir, you can't be down here while I'm working."

Justin had been a Warden of the White Council at the time. The entire Senior Council, the seven most powerful wizards in the world, had been roused to take down a single man, supposedly one of the most dangerous in history.

"Sir?"

It had been a man named Heinrich Kemmler. The man who literally wrote the books on Necromancy. The man who had kept Bob for forty years while he had unlocked all the secrets Death normally kept to itself. Bob never, ever forgets.

And now a Necromancer wannabe had him.

"No," I managed to say. "No, I'm not OK."

I looked over at her, and she smiled at me with just a hint of pity in her blue eyes. She had pulled down her facemask, the kind you see in hospitals that covers the mouth and nose. Her hands had those blue sterilized gloves all crime scene investigators are supposed to have when handling evidence, and she wore a white full body smock, down to the booties around her feet. Her face and hair masks she'd pulled down, and her curves were smooth wherever I could see them.

I could have sworn I'd met her before, but I couldn't remember when no matter how hard I tried.

"Is this your home?" she asked gently, holding her camera close to her chest.

I swallowed, blinking away some of the dust in my eyes. "Yeah. My little fortress, breached."

"Hey, don't be sad," she tried to cheer me up, then looked down and carefully stepped around the mess on the floor to get closer to me. "Even if today hasn't gone the way you thought it would, I'm sure things can always get better, can't they?"

I nodded, breathing deep. I took the room in a second time, just taking in all the destroyed ingredients I'd picked up over the years. It was going to be a long time before I could safely brew anything in this lab again.

"Did you lose anything important?" She asked, and I blinked, looking back up at her. She gestured around at the broken goods.

I followed her gesture, trying to see if anything was salvageable.

"You know…" she said slowly, looking at her camera. "I've been having trouble stepping around this mess. I might have to go back and take pictures of everything a second time, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. The first pictures aren't really that good…" she trailed off, and I looked at the bridge of her nose, just close enough to see her eyes without looking into them. "I wouldn't really notice if anything was missing. It hasn't been marked into evidence yet, after all."

I slowed my breathing, taking a moment to clear my head.

Yes, this sucked. Yes, things were bad. Yes, somebody was going to pay for coming into my house and breaking my things.

But that was only going to happen if I wasn't locked up in a cell.

There are a few things around my lab that aren't exactly legal. That is to say, I'd find myself locked up in questioning for a good long while if the police happened upon any of them, even if I could now lie and say that whoever had trashed the place had left them here. A few of those things I could already see were destroyed beyond all recognition, but one in particular still stood out.

My lead-lined box of depleted uranium.

I spotted it sitting near the top of a pile of sand from the Mojave desert, the jar it was in now just shards of glass among the other spell components. I stepped over the broken remains of my lab table to pick up the box.

It was sitting next to the edge of where I'd paid to have a circle installed into my cellar. I'd forgotten it, given the state of the rest of my house.

Under normal circumstances, I make absolutely sure that the circle is always clean, just in case I need to use it to protect myself from nasties that can somehow break through my wards and threshold. There's another reason I like to keep it clean, and that's what's buried in concrete underneath it.

I clenched the fingers of my left hand as best as I could. I could imagine the clean patch of flesh among the waxy, melted butter that my hand had been turned into when I'd gone toe to toe with a flamethrower. The little circle, about the size of a nickel, had a vaguely hourglass-shaped inscription in the middle, from where I'd touched the coin of a fallen angel.

The same coin I'd buried underneath that triple-band of silver in the corner of my lab.

"Did you need to take anything else?" the lab tech asked, and I fliched.

"No," I told her, quickly shoving the box into my pocket and standing up straight. "Nothing down here that isn't broken in some way."

If the feds were going to dig up my floor, then I had more problems than I could handle at this point. I had to assume the wrecking crews weren't going to go that far, and that if Death's Wannabes hadn't found it when they'd searched my place the first time, they weren't going to. I had to put the coin out of my mind.

"I haven't taken any pictures upstairs, so I wouldn't know what was missing there, either," she admitted with a small smile. "...I can understand losing everything like this. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I said, stepping carefully over the piles. "'S'not your fault."

I stumbled over one of the broken legs of my lab table, and had to catch myself with my staff before I fell over her. She held her arms close and turned her head, and I found myself standing almost over her, close enough to smell a hint of peaches and strawberries in her hair.

"Be careful," she said softly, her breath hot on my face. "I don't want to see you get hurt."

I swallowed and carefully maneuvered around her side, back to the stairs back up to my apartment.

"Did you drop this?"

I turned back. She was holding up a book with red circles and golden lines across the cover, the title, "Die Lied der Erlking" plastered on the side, next to the writer's name: Samuel Peabody. A bookmark was set in it, halfway down the pages. It was one of the only things in the room that wasn't completely destroyed.

"Sorry, yeah, I must have," I told her, holding out my hand for it.

She turned it over in her blue gloved hands, frowning. "You know the title isn't supposed to be written this way, right?" She handed the book over to me.

I looked down at it. "How do you mean?"

"It's German. I think there's a fairy tale in there that all German children learn, about der Erlkönig. The title should read, Das Lied des Erlkönigs."

I put the book in my duster's large inner pocket, courtesy of being oversized, and thanked her. I gave her one last glance as she pulled her hood and mask back into place, and she winked at me as she noticed me looking at her. I hurried back up the stairs, and made a mental note to read it over later, given that it wasn't a book I actually owned.

Focus, Harry. She said it clearly: get the things you need, and get out of the police's way. Look at the clues you've been left when there's time.

I listed the things I needed to look for off in my mind as I searched:

My blasting rod, which I'd taken out of my coat along with my revolver when I'd taken it off to clean up and restitch my runes of protection.

My revolver, a copy of Dirty Harry's .44, snark about five shots or six not included. Ammo, too, or it wouldn't exactly matter that I had the gun.

My force ring, for those times I want to throw the Hulk's punch around at a moment's notice, but with a long recharge time before I can use it again.

A notebook with call signs in it.

A couple of rocks.

And any clothes that haven't been burned or destroyed, because I wouldn't put it past whoever did this to leave me anything clean to wear.

I forced myself to put my feelings about this mess aside long enough to search my apartment for my stuff. It didn't take long. I'm not going to list all the painful details of the destruction of my place. The gun had miraculously fallen under my bed, and the six spare bullets I'd left in my coat were all I had for it on me. The ring was under the shards of my Mickey Mouse alarm clock. My blasting rod had been broken in half. The notebook was ripped to shreds. The stones were in my closet, under what was left of my clothes; whoever had gone through here had made absolutely sure that all I had left were little strips of cloth.

It hadn't taken long to find it all. Two minutes, tops.

There was a policeman standing at the door waited patiently, the only other one in my home. He was dark skinned, blocky, maybe in his fifties, and his short, frosted grey beard contrasted against his complexion. I walked over to him, gave him a muttered thank you.

"Don't know what you're talking about," he drawled, leaning against the busted door frame. "You just got here a moment ago."

I gave him as best a smile as I could, given the circumstances. "If that's all, I need to find another place to sleep tonight. If it's not, then just tell me what needs to happen. Whoever did this is still out there, probably still after me, and I'd rather not find them waiting for me outside."

The man raised an eyebrow, then leaned out a bit and looked up the stairs. Rather than down at the lightly charred bodies, he looked up at the flashing lights and muffled shouted questions, probably from the reporters. He got up and crossed his arms. "Really? Through all that?"

"Yeah, through all that," I insisted. "These guys don't play by the rules. They're not from around here, and it won't cost them anything if there's a ton of collateral damage. Hell, they might even _want_ that to happen. These are bad people," I checked his nametag, "Rawlins. If there was an orphanage they had to blow up to get at me, they wouldn't hesitate."

He looked around my apartment, nodding slowly. "You know, I've always sort of thought those kinds of things were real, even before the big reveal." He looked about as close to my eyes as he could. Apparently he'd listened when I'd told people not to look in Wizards' eyes. "...the bodies on the stairs. You booby-trapped your house?"

I swallowed, then nodded. "The only kinds of things that would set it off like that are those that aren't exactly coming over for afternoon tea. And if it helps, I'm pretty sure they were dead before they even tried to get in."

He shook his head, whispering some curse words I couldn't make out. Probably something that rhymed with duck or clam.

"Get out of here," he told me, not looking at me anymore. "Before somebody higher up decides it's your fault. Before this gets worse."

I barked out a quick laugh, taking one last look around my apartment. "I think they've probably already decided it's my fault, but thanks for the advice. I'll fix this. I will."

He didn't say anything else, just looked at me funny, like I'd completely misheard him, and I got moving.

I made it about five steps up the stairs before about a hundred voices started shouting at me. Flashlights blinded me, and I covered my eyes and had my left arm up and my shield working in an instant.

It took two hours to get the mess sorted.

As it turns out, a single cop does not speak with the authority of the entire force. In hindsight, that was really, really obvious.

The cop in charge was furious, and he was about five seconds away from having me held for 24 hours. I did my best not to sweat too hard, and thanked my lucky stars that the guys he asked to search me were less angry at the whole situation and were more like Rawlings, pitying me for being caught up in something for the thousandth time. If they hadn't been, I can guarantee they wouldn't have taken my words about the stuff I had on me at face value.

Legally speaking, they could search me because I'd barged into a crime scene and had a chance to mess with it. Also because I'm considered a dangerous individual. Since I'd been recognized as a wizard, I've been stopped and searched a few more times than I was used to just walking about, so I'd taken the time to finally get my concealed-carry license for my sidearm. Murphy had called me an idiot for taking so long, but looked secretly proud when she thought I wasn't looking.

If she's aware of the sawn-off shotgun or any of my half-brother's illegally-modified fully automatics, she hasn't been as vocal about it.

On the topic of being searched, I gave vague answers about the lead-lined box, but otherwise told the guys it wasn't a toy and that, as a wizard, I'm safest to keep it. They believed me, but still noted down that I had it. Part of me wanted to throw it away at that point, but the other part knew I wasn't going to get another chance to get such an important spell component any time soon. Plus, I needed it.

About a thousand questions later, during which I claimed to have no idea how the things on my staircase had fried themselves and gave my alibi about Mac's Bar and the Monsters' mansion, I was finally told not to leave town and they let me go with a warning. Part of that warning included, "don't you dare say a thing to those reporters, or we'll take you in here and now."

They'd moved the police lines past my car after I'd arrived, trapping it in, and I pointedly ignored the reporters shouting for me as we all approached my car. I'd had enough of their crap for the year, thank you very much, warnings aside.

Thomas joined me at my car with Mouse, and he got in the passenger side seat without a word. I opened the door for my dog, then got in.

"You know, I haven't been questioned by the police in quite some time," Thomas said conversationally as I turned the Blue Beetle's key.

"That right?" I asked, gently pumping the gas as the car turned over endlessly.

"Yeah. I suppose I had better protections before I left the family estate. I wonder how many more times I'll be interrogated before the week is out," he said, leaning back in his chair as best he could.

I grunted, turning the key back and forward again. The car stopped turning over completely, just buzzed quietly whenever the key was held forward.

I sighed, leaning my face into the wheel.

Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful.

"I take it calling some form of transport wouldn't be out of the question?" Thomas asked, tapping one of his pockets.

"That, and someplace to stay the night. Damn it. Your phone isn't dead, is it?"

He pointedly opened his door and stepped out of the car before trying it. Given my emotional state, I didn't blame him.

He leaned down and back into the car. "It can still make and receive calls. The screen is flickering, though."

I got out of the car and moved to sit on the hood. Thomas let Mouse back out and called us a taxi.

I was exhausted before we'd gotten to my little home, Monster food aside. Now? Now I was ready to pass out on the hood of my car.

"A taxi is on the way," Thomas told me, moving to sit down next to me.

A stray thought wormed its way into my mind as I looked back at the cops, now swarming into and out of my house. "Hey, you got searched too, right?" I muttered, not looking at him. "Were you still holding the shotgun?"

He snorted. "They had a female officer looking me over."

Which meant she'd taken one look at him and then promptly shut down all of her higher brain functions when his inner demon had come close to the surface. It wasn't against the Laws of Magic, especially because he wasn't technically a spellcaster, but it was as close to the grey zone as you could possibly get. If he'd been a wizard, I'd give him a coin flip on the Wardens knocking down his door.

I scowled, still looking around. "Must be nice, still standing on the less-known side of things. She'll be OK, won't she?"

Thomas must have nodded, because there was a pause before he quickly said, "Yeah. She'll be fine."

I sighed. After a few moments more, I asked, "What d'you think'll happen when the nastiest nasties finally get outed all the way? I mean, given that tossing mortals into a supernatural equation used to be more of a nuclear deterrent."

Thomas leaned back as Mouse finished walking a slow circle around the Beetle, then sat down next to me. I scratched his head.

"That is the million dollar question, isn't it?" Thomas said. "You know, Laura almost asked me to come home when those Monsters first rose from the depths." I looked at him, startled. He held up his thumb and forefinger up. "She was this close to saying it. She was worried I was going to get the rest of the White Court outed because I'm staying at your apartment. The White Court needs humanity on the whole left alone beyond our own needs, right? So we can quietly feed on their emotions in peace." He looked at me critically, but didn't finish his thought.

"Yeah," I nodded. "You guys're the lucky ones, aren't you?"

White Court Vampires feed on emotions, like Thomas said. Each house has an emotion they stick to, like lust, or fear, or even despair. One of the only weaknesses his kind has is a strong emotion opposite to their preferred lunch; Thomas will get serious burns if he touches somebody protected by an act of True Love. But that's it. He gets to walk around in the sunlight, worship as he pleases, and gets dashing good looks besides.

Well. Other than the inner demon, I mean. That'll still twist his mind and soul if he gives in to whatever it desires, or feeds like his old family does, sucking people down until they die.

He shook his head. "We may have the highest chance of staying integrated with society when our publicists spin the story, but we're still not human. I'm friends with you, but that doesn't mean I want to push my luck with anybody else."

I got it. I'm not the brightest bulb or the sharpest knife, but I got it.

"I don't know how it'll be handled, but I think outing those 'nastiest nasties' will still be considered the nuclear option. Even with Wizards and the new Monsters outed, humanity on the whole will still probably sit in the dark."

I agreed. If a person didn't know exactly what went bump in the night, then chances are he'd just upgrade the security in his house and go on his merry way. Out of sight, out of mind. People don't like to get involved if they can help it. It's just the way people are.

We shared a few minutes in silence, waiting for the cab.

An officer went out towards the reporters as we did, and I nudged Thomas so we could watch.

The cop raised his hand, and the roar of questions fell away. "Until our investigation is complete, we can't release any pertinent information. Our public information officer will issue a statement when all of the facts are known. Thank you."

Then he just turned and walked away, completely ignoring the outraged shouting as he went.

I think I could learn a thing or two from that guy.

The taxi arrived, and we headed out before the reporters could renew their focus on me.

* * *

We had a couple choices on places to stay for the evening.

Murphy was out of town, and I knew she wouldn't mind if I crashed at her place while she was out. I could water her plants if she hadn't asked somebody else to, and I knew the Murphy threshold, the intangible wall of "home" that surrounded her place, had been built up by three generations of police officers who had lived for and in this town. That feeling of home translates into a very real barrier against the supernatural, so much so that some beings can't enter at all without an invitation. Given that I wasn't sure if I had a standing invitation, her house wasn't as much of an option as I hoped it might be.

My second choice was Michael Carpenter's house. I'm pretty sure his threshold could be seen from space, and there wasn't a chance in the world he'd turn me away. The downside was, his threshold's power came from having a huge family he'd raised in a house he'd built himself, and there wasn't any way in hell I was putting them at risk just so I could get a decent night's sleep.

My last choice?

We pulled back up to the closed gate of the Monster Mansion.

My last choice was a fortified magical bunker staffed with the King and Queen of a species that was literally made of magic, and they'd already invited me to stay the night.

Sometimes it's nice to have friends.

I had to pay the cab driver something akin to a down payment on a new house, and waved to Asgore, still standing guard out front. He waved back, then turned around and went inside, probably to open the gate remotely.

I was proven right a moment later.

"Good evening Harry, Thomas, Mouse." Asgore said as we approached. "It is good to see you again. I must ask, however: what happened to your car?"

"It broke down," I told him, and we stopped as he raised one massive, gauntleted paw.

"I am terribly sorry, but we have already had an incident this week where one with the face of a friend tried to gain entry to our home. How can we be sure you are who you say you are?" He asked.

Out of all of us, it was Mouse who answered first.

"Bark, woof arf ruff," he said.

Asgore nodded, then stepped aside. "Welcome back. Make yourselves at home."

Thomas and I exchanged a glance, and I looked down at Mouse. He just let his tongue hang from his mouth as he panted.

"What the hell did he say?" I asked, bemused.

"He reminded me of how I reacted to finding that Frisk was unharmed," Asgore said simply, a sad smile on his face.

Well, then. I knew my dog was smarter than I was, but having it confirmed in that particular way was… interesting. Especially because I hadn't known that he could talk before that particular moment, even if I didn't understand the words.

"Uh, wonderful," I told him, still eyeing Mouse. "Where exactly were we staying tonight? I mean, if it's still OK."

Asgore furrowed his brow, then opened the door and pointed at the staircase. "Up those stairs, then to your right is a hallway. At the end of an open room, there are two doors. You may use those rooms for as long as you need them. Please, let me know if there is anything else we can do for you in the meantime."

"Sure," I told him, stepping inside. "Appreciate it."

Asgore shut the door behind us, still standing guard outside.

Given that the Monsters seemed to respond well to him, I had Mouse lead us down the long hallway on the second floor. We passed a bunch of doors until we came to an open one, a lounge with a big flat-screen TV taking up a huge chunk of one wall, and a bar on another, with two couches in front of the TV and a glass table with chairs over near the bar. I briefly wondered if it'd come with the house, or if the Monsters had installed it.

Past another staircase, this one circular, was another short hallway with two doors at the end.

"Looks like that's us," I said, and we crossed the last room. I suppose part of the reason we hadn't seen anyone must have been the hour. It was probably past midnight by then.

The rooms were nice, like four star hotel nice. Each was bigger than my own bedroom at home, with its own bathroom twice the size of mine. They probably had heated water, too, which was a luxury I didn't get to enjoy very often.

"Alright," I told the others, "I'm going to need a quiet place to myself for a little bit, but after that Mouse can decide which room he wants to stay in. Anything else we need to discuss tonight, or can we finally call it a day?"

Mouse chuffed, then turned back and settled himself halfway down the short hall between us and the lounge. Thomas shook his head, said goodnight, and took the room on the left.

"Good night, Mouse," I told my dog, and he wagged his tail.

It was good to see he didn't care one way or the other about the whole talking thing. I headed into the room on the right.

I took a few minutes to use the bathroom, have a drink of water, and to take stock of myself before I was ready to begin.

When I'd tried to take my notebook with the signs and countersigns, I'd meant to use it to call the White Council's home base in Edinburg to update them on the problems I was up against. We may not see eye to eye, but the last time a Necromancer had come to power, it had taken almost everything they had to bring him down. Now we had time travel in the mix to deal with, too, and while I was pretty sure the black hats were responsible, especially after that errant comment by the last one I'd squared off with, I couldn't be one hundred percent certain. If I'd had that book, I'd have been able to call them up on the phone to let them know what was going on. They actually had a switchboard that I think is about as old as can be, which helps mitigate the magic problems of calling the magic hub of the world. Call quality was still terrible, but you could expect them to be able to answer those phones.

There are other ways to contact the White Council. I had my little box of rocks for just that purpose, and I knew the "number" of a guy who could get their attention in a heartbeat. This member in particular, though, I would have been happier leaving out of the equation.

My mentor's name is Ebenezar McCoy, and he's the youngest member of the Senior Council. I used to call him Sir. While DuMorne was responsible for teaching me the basics of how to use magic, McCoy is the one who taught me the nuts and bolts of its mechanics alongside the responsibility of having it. He taught me to treat magic both as a source of energy, and as a byproduct of the many emotional and physical phenomena of the world. He wrote a book called Elementary Magic, and it's the first one most wizards give their apprentices to learn from. I'd say he knows about as much about the nuts and bolts of magic as anybody else in the world.

It's because of him that I believe that there's more magic in a baby's first laugh than in any spell that a wizard is capable of conjuring, because it's something whole, something pure. He taught me why the Laws of Magic exist, how and why black magic corrupts the user so seriously, why using it even once can taint you in ways it's hard to come back from.

Ebenezar McCoy is the man I grew up respecting more than I have anybody else in this world. He's about the closest thing in this world I have to a real father.

Last year, I got deep into trouble with the Red Court of vampires, deeper than I'd been even when I'd kickstarted the war between them and the White Council to save my girlfriend at the time. I'd panicked, and I'd called up my mentor in the hopes that he'd be able to help save me. McCoy had helped pull me out of that fire, but I'd learned something about him when he had.

When the Red Court vampire Duke Paolo Ortega had failed to kill me in a duel to recognize Chicago's protected status, having cheated and swarmed the place with vampires during the fight, he'd fled to Casaverde. My mentor had called to tell me to watch the news that evening. Sure enough, reports were coming in that the stronghold had been destroyed when an old Russian satellite had been pulled out of orbit. I didn't know it at the time, but there were plenty of mortal humans there alongside the hundreds of Red Court Knights. There were no survivors.

Ebenezar McCoy is the White Council's Blackstaff. It's a position that means he gets to ignore the laws of magic to do whatever job they tell him to do. Those same laws he taught me to respect, lest I fall into darkness? He breaks them wholesale. It's apparently part of his goddamn _job_ to piss on the things he taught me to believe in.

I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to be on the same _continent_ as the man, but right then, I didn't have much choice.

I forced myself to set all that aside while I drew a circle in chalk at the foot of the bed. I took a little box of rocks out of my pocket, then rooted around for the smooth piece of fire-rounded obsidian I kept hidden among the other less magical stones. I set it down in front of me, tossing the others back onto the bed, and slowly began to meditate.

Using the speaking stone is a delicate piece of magic, by my usual standards at least, so it took some time before I calmed myself down enough to try to use it.

It took another few minutes to push my anger at the old man aside after the first attempt completely failed, but I tried again anyway. If it wasn't to protect Chicago, I'd have tossed the damned rock out the first chance I had.

Slowly, carefully, I chanted Ebenezar McCoy's name, willing the magic to find him, to tell him I wanted to chat. Slowly, the room beyond my circle faded into an inky background, the lights dimming as the circle and speaking stone filled my senses.

Twenty minutes later, the bastard finally answered the call.

* * *

Ebenezar McCoy is an old man, having served on the Senior Council for a few years, and on the White Council for probably a hundred and fifty more. He's got a short, stocky build, a holdover from his youth (if he ever had one) in the Ozarks in Missouri. He's lived there for centuries, plural, but other than the white tufts of hair around his otherwise bald head and the short, white beard covering his face like an out of season Santa Claus, it wasn't always obvious just how old he was.

When he'd answered my call, his own speaking stone had appeared, translucent, over my own, making it seem thicker, denser.

His face was haggard, sweaty, red, and he hadn't completely caught his breath. He looked almost as angry as I felt, in the first moment. Then he realized who was calling.

"Hoss?" he asked. He was too confused, just for a moment, to be angry over whatever else was going on.

"McCoy," I said back, and he flinched. Whether it was my cold tone, the hatred I wasn't bothering to control, or failing to call him Sir like I normally did, I wasn't sure. Probably some combination of all three.

He took a deep, controlled breath, and nodded to himself. "It's good to see you, even with everything else going on."

"Chicago is under attack by Necromancers," I said evenly. He might have wanted to dance around pleasantries, to pretend things were fine between us, but I wasn't willing to.

His subdued gasp of confusion didn't last, and his unfocused eyes danced around the edges of the inky blackness as he put together some puzzle around what I'd said. His face went old, even more tired than he'd been when he answered my call, just for a moment, and then it hardened back into something furious. Finally, about four seconds after I'd told him, he nodded, then looked back at me more calmly.

"I'm officially requesting the help of any and all Wardens the White Council can send us. Even _you_ ," I spat.

I hadn't meant to add that, but it fit. He looked like he'd swallowed something foul, but he just shook his head, then sighed again, the anger fading back into something more manageable.

"Hoss, I think we've been had," he said.

I waited for him to explain.

"We're being hammered on all fronts," he continued. "And you're not the only one calling out to deal with threats like that one. How bad is it?"

"At least two, and as many as five Necromancers, and I'm still not completely sure why." I took up my notes. "A guy and girl wearing black robes, a guy wearing a duster like mine but less black and more khaki, a broken man with liver spots, and a girl with a ghoul backing her up. The girl with a ghoul ate a ton of the energy in the air around me, just swallowed it when I threw a blast of force at her, and she made me feel like I was asleep on my feet, barely able to move. I actually Saw the girl in the black robe. She had energies around her like you'd expect to see around restless spirits of the dead on el Dia de los Muertos." I dropped my notes and gave Ebenezar something that could charitably be called a smile.

He chuckled darkly. "Is that all?"

"No," I said flatly. "There was also an attack on my home; my front door looks like it went ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and they got through my wards by throwing what I think were walking corpses at them until they went down."

He looked me over more closely, squinting while he tried to see if I was injured anywhere.

"I'm fine," I kept my tone flat.

He rubbed a hand down his face, wiping away some of the sweat. "Sounds like you've got more to add to that."

"If my sources are to be believed, they're killing those Underground Monsters to take their power, kind of like how-"

I cut myself off.

I forced myself to finish the thought.

"Sort of like how some kinds of black magic can make you strong, killing these new Monsters wholesale apparently gives you strength at the cost of your soul."

He shook his head, then chuckled. It wasn't a happy chuckle, more an involuntary one. "You really can't keep out of the middle of things, can you, Hoss?"

"You'd know."

He looked at something in the distance, and waved whatever or whoever it was off with an angry glare. He looked back at me appraisingly, trying to gauge me. "Why'd you call me instead of Edinburg? Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but you haven't-"

"They trashed my house and I lost my book of signs and countersigns," I cut him off, biting down the feeling that he thought I'd called him because he was the Blackstaff. "I don't have any other contacts on the White Council, and when Morgan came by this morning he didn't exactly leave his calling card. It was either call you or try to handle it myself, and I'm sure as hell not going to do that. Not against Necromancers."

"Smart move," he told me, but his eyes had flashed when I'd been talking. "If that woman with the ghoul is who I think it is, you weren't ready to throw down with her head on."

I snorted. Yeah, no shit.

"If you end up against her again, split her focus," he told me hurriedly. "The more people hitting her from a distance, the better, especially with guns, but be careful when she 'dies,' especially if there's anyone near her. When did you speak with Morgan, exactly?"

I paused at the tone and change of subject. "Maybe eight or nine this morning? Ten at the latest."

"Hoss, Morgan was _here_ at eight or nine this morning."

I inhaled deeply, making the mental leap as to why, then looked around the darkened room beyond my circle again. "Is there anybody who could, uh, intercept this call? Anybody at all?"

He raised an eyebrow, not bothering to look around. "Only if they're listening in on your end, Hoss."

I concentrated just a little harder on holding my circle, then cleared my throat. "If the Morgan who came by can be trusted at all, whoever it was, then the problem is related to time travel. I think I've been getting little bits of memories from the future. I think this necromancer with the ghoul knows about it, too."

He took a moment to process what I said, then looked so close to my eyes I wasn't sure how we managed to avoid a Soul Gaze. "If the Capiorcorpus is working with a time traveler, then I'll get something prepared to hold them down before I get there. Don't tell anybody else about this, Hoss, no matter who asks or why."

I guess the fake, or maybe real, Morgan I'd spoken with was right. I hoped I hadn't screwed something up telling Murphy about it, let alone Thomas.

"Nobody else. Got it," I told him, managing to keep my words even.

I did my best to control my breathing, but part of me was boiling inside. Internally, I was wondering if he knew how to stop time travelers because he'd done it himself at some point to kill somebody with magic. Whether it was another one of those things he'd do to 'get his job done, no matter what.'

"Is there anything else?" I asked him, clenching my fists. "Or will the entire White Council be visiting Chicago in the very near future?"

I've seen my old mentor a lot over the years, but rarely did I see him as tired as he looked when I asked that question. His face doesn't normally have a ton of wrinkles, doesn't sag, and he doesn't normally look his age. When he answered me, every one of his years was fighting to show itself on his face.

"That might be a problem, Hoss," He said slowly. "There's been a new development in the war."

"What could possibly-" I snapped, then took a deep breath. "What's more important than a bunch of probably-necromancers turning my city into their own personal clubhouse?!"

"Not a lot, Hoss," he told me. "But plenty enough for the soldiers we have left."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

He took a deep breath of his own, then told me. "There was an attack in Palermo, Hoss. We held them off, at first, but then they called in Outsiders. Lots of them."

"Stars and Stones," I breathed, almost forgetting my anger at the news. "How bad was it?"

"I think we lost twenty three Wardens when they showed up, along with the others we lost in that fight overall," he said.

I shook my head. "That's terrible, but there are a few hundred Wardens worldwide. How many-"

"That was their opening attack," he cut me off. "The Wardens fled to a hospital in the Congo to recover. And the Red Court had been tipped off that they would."

My mind ground to a halt. Those kinds of secrets aren't exactly easy to ferret out. Not when only a few people in the whole world know them, and all are supposed to be the White Council's most trusted Lieutenants.

"They used nerve gas, Hoss," he told me, his face grim. "Thousands of civilians, people who had nothing to do with the war, just to make sure they got us. But they got us all right. Last count, we lost another hundred and forty Wardens. That's alongside all the other losses we've had in this war."

 _Hell's Bells_. "How… how many Wardens are left?" I asked him.

He just shook his head. "Not enough for all the different attacks they've thrown at us since. You're not the only one calling for help, Hoss."

My head got kind of light, and I needed to lean on one of my hands to stop from falling over. The Red Court wasn't like us. They could throw away hundreds of vampires like cannon fodder, because other than the ones who had survived for thousands of years, they could always just turn more humans. Wizards were born, not made, and fewer still could handle combat. Last count we had less than four hundred Wardens at any given time, closer to three hundred than four. The best of the best, each capable of holding their own against some of the nastiest things in the world.

"Hoss?" he asked, voice low.

I took a deep breath, then pushed myself back up, shaking my head. "Did they get any of the seven Senior Council members?" I asked. I may not have liked half of them, but the big seven were worth two dozen Wardens each. Some of them twice that. If they were hurt...

He shook his head. "No, Hoss. We're taking the field wherever we can, holding down all the biggest threats here. But there are only seven of us. We can't be everywhere."

I nodded. I didn't know what else was out there, but if the Red Court was going to let Outsiders in, then I could understand why they were forced to wait on these necromancers getting bad before they could send more soldiers. I hated it, but I understood.

"Tell me you can send _someone_ ," I told him. I didn't, couldn't, phrase it as a question.

His tired face turned stony, and the fires lit up behind his eyes. "We will, Hoss. Count on it. I won't leave you flapping in the wind, no matter how bad it gets elsewhere. If it gets bad, I'll come there myself."

I glared at him. "Tell whoever's left to meet me at the Monster's Mansion on the Golden Coast," I told him, then gave him the address. "Keep safe."

He sighed, not bothering to ask why the Accorded Neutral Grounds at Mac's bar weren't the first place to meet. "You too, Hoss." Then he cut off the connection.

Great. Like there wasn't enough to worry about already.

The cavalry wasn't coming. Not the way it was supposed to. Necromancers, some of the more dangerous threats in the magical world given enough time? Apparently they didn't rank high on whatever totem pole the rest of the White Council was up against.

I chuckled in the darkness as the outsides of my circle slowly came back into focus, the call's energies passing away.

Like I'd told that kid. Some days, it's just me against the world.

Most days, feels like.

If I was going to face it, I was going to face it well rested, well fed, and as mentally prepared as I could be.

I cleaned up the chalk circle with a spell, then stood up to stretch my muscles. I stepped out into the hall, and Mouse raised his head to see me, wagging his tail. I leaned down, gave him as good a hug as I could, scratching him around his ears. Talking or not, he was still my dog. I worried about Mister, who I hoped was still OK wherever he was, whether he had Bob with him or not.

I went back into my room, warded my door, and collapsed into bed.

Tomorrow could wait for at least a few hours. I'd burn those bridges when I came to them.

I closed my eyes. Exhaustion did the rest.


	13. Dust Off, Keep Going

Well, this has been… fun. Since my last update, there were:

Twelve pages thrown out,

Eleven pounds of bloating,

Ten prayers to porcelain,

Nine sudden bills paid,

Eight sleepless nightmares

Seven dozen blood draws,

Six family arguments,

 **Five weeks in clinic**!

Fours hours surgery,

Three teeth yanked,

Two deadlines passed,

And a feeling that this chapter blows!

My last several months have been absolute garbage. Just horrible. The author of this story hasn't died, however, which I'm putting in the plus column.

It does, however, mean that my writing speed (and possibly quality) have tanked in recent months. I'm doing what I can to fix that. Special thanks to my editors Alix and Alex, who both have stepped up in my time of need for both research and review.

So. We last ended with Dresden taking a nap at the end of the first day, and the first arc. Now, hopefully, all the pieces are in place for the next part. Two sections and maybe two dozen chapters left to go, plus a possible after-the-end section.

Thank you all for staying with me thus far while I've stumbled around both in the story and in life. I'll get back to it, one page at a time, and hopefully Dresden will survive his world falling apart a little better than I have.

Cheers!

* * *

 _Scratch scratch scratch_.

I wasn't anywhere. Couldn't feel much. Just warm, calm, quiet. No aches. No pains.

 _Scratch scratch scratch_.

Slowly, I came back to myself. Felt like I was in the embrace of a deep blanket, deeper than the one I was used to.

 _Scratch scratch scratch scratch_.

I opened my eyes. The room wasn't mine, but it was nice. I must have stayed at a hotel yesterday.

 _Scratch scratch scratch_.

And apparently I'd left Mouse outside! Oh, management wasn't going to like that!

I struggled to stand, pushing myself up, and made my way to the door; I'd left my staff leaning beside it. I guess I hadn't gotten undressed before bed yesterday; my leather duster held tight against my arms until I tugged it back into place. I pulled open the door, feeling my own magical wards around it, and I reached forward and took them down. Thomas was waiting there with Mouse, who licked my hand.

"Good morning, guys," I told them, stretching. "Either of you sleep as well as I did?"

Thomas looked oddly at Mouse, like he expected an answer, then shook his head and looked me up and down. "Did you do some kind of drugs last night, Harry? You're… chipper."

I blinked. I looked back in the room, confused. "I don't… think I did? Keep an eye on me, I guess." I shrugged it off and grabbed my staff. "Let's see what kind of breakfast this place has, eh?"

Thomas stopped me before I could step past him. "I'm serious, Harry. Are. You. OK?"

The added emphasis slowed me down, and I stopped, meeting his eyes. We'd done the Soul Gaze long ago, so there wasn't any risk we'd have another.

Soul Gazes never fade in memory, ever. I realized I'd had one last night, one of the Skeleton, Sans, and his long, dangerous hallway.

The memories of yesterday flooded back, coming in way later than they should have. Everything from barely waking up onward through meeting the King of Monsters, taking a job to explain the White Council, Morgan's threats, the failed sleeping potions, the attacks at Mort's and at Mac's, rushing to the Monster's mansion, my trashed home, coming back and finally…

"Oh, shit," I breathed. I focused back on my brother, who'd caught my shoulder when I'd started to slump, coming out of the gentle haze I'd felt. "Um. We have a problem."

He chuckled. "Just the one, then?"

I shook my head. "Breakfast, then I'm going to bring you up to speed. Things just got worse. Much worse."

I had Mouse lead us back into the lounge we'd passed earlier, with a bar on one end and the big TV on the other. Unlike last night, there were a few early risers around. The TV was on, quietly playing Sesame Street, and a pair of monsters eyed us from the couches in front of the screen, one a mouse in a scarf and the other something akin to the devil's twin. There were also a few monsters sitting at the bar, including an oversized yellow bird. An actual bird. A strange, tuxedo-clad creature with a dancing fire for a head stood behind the bar, holding an empty glass in one fiery hand and a rag in the other. They eyed us, too, and I had to look twice when I realized the fire was somehow wearing glasses.

"On second thought," I muttered, "maybe we should hold off on trying to push through the house a second time."

The glass table near the bar didn't have any monsters sitting at it, and Thomas and I moved over to sit down, Mouse trailing us. The monsters reminded me of Mac's customers on a bad day, looking at me like I was the harold of some dangerous events they wanted no part of, but they weren't crazy or motivated enough to actually try telling me to leave. I did my best to ignore them.

"Alright," I started, smoothing back my hair. "The kind of help I was hoping for isn't on the way. Some is, but not half of what we wanted."

"What happened?" Thomas pressed.

I told him quietly, not wanting anything nearby to hear. It took a few minutes, and a scaled reptile monster wearing pajamas with cat-girls on them shuffled in and sat sleepily at the bar while I did.

When I finally finished, Thomas swore.

"So we're stuck in the middle of a worldwide attack by some force working with the Red Court, and the Red Court is working with _Outsiders_?!" he asked, trying to keep his voice low.

If I haven't taken the time to explain the dangers of the Seventh Law, it's with good reason. Thou Shalt Not Open The Outer Gates. It's basically the only law you can get beheaded over just for _trying to find out more_. The Red Court was playing footsie with Lovecraftian horrors that'll destroy all of existence if they get half a chance, and they were just one piece of a much larger, more dangerous picture. When _those things_ come to town, most people stop thinking about winning or losing. They start thinking about minimizing losses, if it's even possible.

"That's about the length of it, yeah," I sighed. "And we're running out of time. If we can't shut them down all at once, we're going to be right back where we started, only we won't even know we failed."

Thomas brought his fist down toward the table suddenly, but stopped just short of smashing it. The lighter slam still made the yellow reptile in pajamas squeak and flinch at the sudden movement and sound. I looked over at it, cowering somewhat, and saw that the bartender had squared up and set the glass and rag down on the bar.

"Sorry," Thomas managed. He gave them half a smile, doing his best to look sheepish.

The pajama monster took a shuddering breath, then pushed off the stool and waddled over to us, hands rubbing over one another. The creature was short, and probably would have only come close to my waist if I'd been standing up, but stood at about eye level with us sitting down. "Y-you guys b-better not cause trouble here, alright?" it (she?) managed to say.

"We're not trying to," I offered. "Just want to have some breakfast and move on, and it doesn't have to be in that order. Shouldn't have trouble from us."

"W-well, good!" she said forcefully. "We've had some trouble with humans before, and-and we're not going to stand for it anymore." She shrunk in a little on herself. "Not-not that you're going to do anything, but we'll stop you if you try!"

"We're cool, Sheriff Shorty," I insisted, waving her down. "If anything, we're here to help. That's the plan, anyway."

If I didn't hear it in her voice, the shock written across her face said it all. "H-help?!"

She shook her head, like she was trying to clear it, then took a cell phone out of her pajama pockets and turned halfway away from us. She started typing into it, and Thomas and I exchanged glances.

"If you think we should go-" Thomas began, but she shook her head and pressed one last button forcefully.

"Sorry, I just can't stand by when I'm not sure anymore. Undyne is coming. I-if there isn't any-"

She was cut off by the sound of heavy footsteps racing up the long hallway, and the Fish-woman in question was at our table with a spear in our faces in seconds. Thomas and I managed not to flinch as I took her in a second time, looking over her tank top and sweats. Given the heavy fragrance of sushi and little droplets of sweat, I could hazard a guess that she was up and at 'em in the early morning for some cruel parody of an exercise routine.

Her glare, backed up by those shark teeth, twisted in confusion. "Alphys?" she asked, pointing her spear from my face over to Thomas, then down at Mouse. His tongue waved lazily around as he contemplated the spear like an oversized dog toy; apparently he wasn't bothered by the interesting fish or her smell. "What did they do?"

The squat yellow monster, Alphys apparently, went from starry-eyed and satisfied to unsure in the same time it took for Undyne to arrive. That is to say, almost instantly. "I-I-I…"

The fire monster behind the counter murmured something, and if I'd been Listening I might have caught it. Undyne's weird fish-fin ears wiggled, and she dropped her spear. It vanished as it hit the ground. She gave us another one of those smiles that reminded me of a combination of the one I'd seen on the face of Lake Michigan's own creature of the black lagoon (I'd shot it with my old .38 before being dragged down to the depths, but caught a cold after), that ghoul we'd fought earlier, and an angler fish. So plenty of wonderful associations there.

"I thought you guys left yesterday. Guess Sans doesn't keep as good a watch as he thought!" she said like it was a joke. "Have you eaten yet? Breakfast is on me if you haven't!"

And just like that, the tense atmosphere was gone. Apparently the fish knight was respected enough that her approval bought us all kinds of leeway, and a huge, cupcake-shaped spider that had been watching from the long hall decided it was safe to come out and join the others on the couch.

Though she didn't manage to find her voice, Alphys joined us at the table while Undyne brought a huge platter piled high with pancakes, syrup, muffins, toast, hash browns, bacon, sausage, several thin cuts of steak, a couple styles of eggs, and the king of warm morning wake-up calls, coffee. Apparently having a fire monster cook for you was about as close as you could get to having a professional chef on staff, and I caught more than a few glints of yellow pass between the two of them in what I suspect was a tip worth more than my car.

"You'll have to ask if you want something specific, like one of his specialty burgers, but this spread is what we normally have since Grillby's new bar got blown up," Undyne told us as she passed out plates, motioning between herself and the lizard. The yellow monster in question must have had some kind of chameleon background, because her face had turned strawberry red. "I don't know if you hard boiled detective-guys have whiskey in your coffee like in the movies, but you can ask for that too."

I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying the best breakfast I'd had in probably years. Mac's steak sandwiches were still better by a small margin, but they shouldn't have had to compete with the _scrambled eggs_. They shouldn't have had any trouble winning out over the _toast_. Like the plain noodles I'd had yesterday instead of a bottle of Mac's microbrew and famous steak sandwich, the food had something extra that I had to chalk up to magic. Whatever it was, it could make even the simplest of Monster-prepared foods into freaking Lembas bread.

I slid one of the thin steaks off the table and into Mouse's waiting mouth, and Undyne interpreted it as an opportunity to feed him as much as he could eat off our plates, to the dog's delight. She didn't take my warning on giving him hash browns seriously, and I grimaced as she poured half a plate of them into his waiting maw.

"Oh, we're going to pay for that later," I groaned. "He's going to need to be kept out of enclosed spaces for a week."

"M-maybe I can make some kind of mixture that can, uh, reduce his emissions," Alphys finally spoke. "If it's really that bad, I mean."

"Maybe," I offered the olive branch. "If you can feed him something that'll prevent the inevitable biological attack without hurting him, I'm sure everyone he meets for the next few hours will thank you."

"Okay," she said, half to herself as she turned out of her chair and started walking away. "It should just be a question of neutralizing the chemical reaction before he is able to pass the-"

"Hey, wait up a second," I broke her concentration before she managed to get too far. She turned back, giving me the classic deer-in-headlights look at the sudden realization that she'd automatically tried to leave without so much as an off-handed goodbye. With her attention firmly on me, I gestured to the still impressive feast. "He isn't going to gas us _now_. You can take a few minutes to finish breakfast before you whip up whatever super serum you're thinking about. We have time."

She sat back down carefully, flashing me a forced smile. "Uh… sorry about earlier," she said, instead of picking up her utensils. "I didn't mean to treat you like a bad guy. I mean, I did, but I didn't mean it like you _were_ a bad guy, just that we're really sort of _threatened_ by bad guys right now, not just because you sort of _looked like_ one, _not that you do though,_ and-"

"Hey, hey hey!" I raised a hand to calm her down as she became more frantic trying to explain herself out of that mess. "It's fine. No harm, no foul. How about we start over?" I smiled wide, stood, and bowed grandly. "Harry Dresden, professional beanpole, at your service."

The effect was somewhat reduced by my accidentally putting my sleeve in my pancakes and syrup when I leaned over, and I swore under my breath, looking around for a napkin. Mouse pawed lazily at my leg, and I sat back down to let him lick the offending processed tree juice away.

The yellow pajama-covered monster apparently took it at face value, because she stood up on her chair to match me. "I'm Alphys, Royal Scientist and advisor to the throne," she said confidently, with a half bow of her own. Then she blanched. "I mean, I _was_ the royal scientist, then I got fired, and now I'm just on retainer unless they need something. Kind of."

I chuckled. "Works for me." I paused. "Except for the science part, and the thing where you have a cell phone. Doesn't magic typically play foul with technology? I mean, I can't keep a cell phone for more than a week before it breaks, but you were typing on that thing like a teenager."

Alphys blinked. "I… I hadn't heard that. ...Maybe it has something to do with the barrier, and all the years we spent underground? I mean, we got old anime movies that fell down the Waterfall, and I could make those work, so… I guess I'd have to research it before I could come up with anything conclusive."

"Let me know if you do, because there are a ton of times I'd have paid a _lot_ of money I don't have for a chance to phone a friend in the middle of a crisis," I told her.

She nodded thoughtfully. I eventually waved to get her attention, then gestured meaningfully to the food. After a moment she got it, then started eating again.

Undyne leaned over to me. "She's just embarrassed because she didn't realize it was you," she confided with all the whispering volume of an air horn. "She's a huge fan of your work on Monster-Human relations."

"UNDYNE!" The yellow monster screamed, bright red again, and then she actually dove under the table to hide from us. It was glass, and in no way impeded our ability to see her doing her best to further hide under her chair. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Thomas sighed.

"Well, I'm glad that's sorted," Thomas said, ignoring that my plethora of new, unspoken questions had in no way been answered, "But as nice as this has been, we sort of have things to worry about, don't we?"

I nodded, changing gears. "Yeah. Yeah, we do."

I pushed my breakfast aside and folded my hands up with my elbows on the table.

"I know there are a ton of things we need to do today, but first I've got friends who need to be warned." I pointed at Undyne. "If you have a phone you could use, or a landline I could use, then I need to call some werewolves up and tell them to keep an eye out on campus. After that, I think the first place we should check from my map is the morgue. If there's going to be trouble with Necromancers, it's just the most obvious place to start given our choices."

Undyne lifted up her cell phone, and I gave her a number to call. She stepped away to deliver the message, "Dresden says keep your heads down and watch out for Necromancers," because that's the kind of cheery stuff that friends call you about, and I leaned over to Thomas to get his view on things.

"I expect you know more about the threat of Necromancy than I do," he murmured, "but if we're going to have any chance of moving quickly enough to have an impact on these things, we're going to need transport. Either a cab on retainer, or a borrowed car, anything so long as there's room for the grey behemoth. I'm not sure a taxi will be happy with us all day, either."

"Your friends say thanks, but that they'll decide if they're going to keep their heads down," Undyne broke in as she sat back down. "And if you're looking for a car, we've got a bunch you could use."

My eyes settled on her ear-fins, and they wiggled.

Stupid monster hearing superpowers.

"Alright, Undyne," I told her, turning my chair to include her in the conversation. "If you've got a heavy car that'll fit Mouse and the rest of us, and it's old enough not to care about my magic screwing with newer technology, then I'm open to suggestions."

She gave me that fishy grin again, and I realized a second too late that I'd just invited her along.


	14. The Morgue

The older a given piece of technology is, the less likely it is to break around wizards and our magic. I'd normally say 'magic in general,' but the Monsters having cell phones sort of blows that theory out of the water. So it was nice to hear that our hosts had a white convertible Oldsmobile from the 1970s, built like a tank and with a similar turn radius, that we were in the clear to borrow. The only real trouble with it was that there were only two massive doors, so anybody getting into or out of the back had to wait until one of the seats had been shoved forward. Not exactly a prime getaway vehicle unless the top was down for easy entry, and in October that'd be more than a little bit of a pain in the ass.

Thomas was driving us over to the Morgue through the morning traffic, with Undyne yanking at her seatbelt, apparently holding in the urge to scream at every other car on the road. Mouse and I shared the bench in the back, and I had laid the Necromancy map over his back when he put his head in my lap. After considerable argument, and a surprise suplex of Papyrus by Undyne when he tried to insist on coming with (apparently it was friendly and expected, and nobody got hurt), it was agreed that only the four of us would be going.

The 'safety in numbers' argument Alphys had made while giving Mouse his chewy "no mustard gas" supplement had backfired on her when Undyne yelled that the safety of the mansion and its inhabitants was paramount, and that she could hold her own against 'any human who tried to stop her.' Sans was the other likely candidate, but he apparently had other things he wanted to do, like go shopping for more ketchup.

I suspected his true plans were something a little more important than that, but from the responses everyone else gave, nobody seemed to recognize him as powerful.

I put it out of my mind, focusing on the map. After the Morgue, the closest splotches of Necromancy were the University of Illinois, just up the road, and the Field Museum, next to the aquarium and Northerly island just off lake Michigan. I'd already warned the Alphas to keep an eye out, but they were on the way and I considered stopping over to see them anyway. It probably wouldn't hurt.

That little dot on the interstate bothered me, too. Why would there be something happening out that way?

"Argh, do I have to wear this stupid belt?!" Undyne complained for the sixth time, yanking it away from her black tank top and engaging the safety catch. "It's not like I'll get hurt even if we crash!"

I sighed, folding up the map. "Other than the law?" I asked. "Trust me. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can exit a car without a seatbelt, and if we need to flee from a hitter, I'd rather you were still in the car if it could still run. And this thing?" I tapped the side of the car. "Compared to this, newer cars are like empty coke cans, folding in on themselves at the first sign of pressure. This thing probably barely notices it was crashed into."

Undyne stopped fiddling with the seat belt again, and I mentally prepared another answer for the seventh time she bothered to ask about her seat belt.

Thankfully, we arrived before too much longer.

The Morgue is a 24/7 kind of place. The dead and dying don't really care about normal hours of operation, and in a big city like Chicago, with nearly three million residents, there are always more on the way. It's one of those unfortunate facts of life you don't really think about until you have to deal with it. There are always cars in the parking lot, no matter what time you're there, with the families of the recently deceased being called over to identify a body or to declare the last wishes regarding the remains. Them, and the homeless who can't survive the winter, keep the morbid location moving at all hours. It's the kind of thing that makes your heart skip a beat, some way or another. Death may not be coming for you today, but he's always there, working in the background.

So when we pulled into the parking lot and there were only three cars among the hundred spaces, Thomas naturally slowed down. I mentally logged the cars, in case they mattered: an old Plymouth road runner, an unmarked Crown Victoria like all the police drive, and a newer Chevy Silverado truck. Their tires were all slashed.

"This is normally the time you'd make some joke about things being too quiet," Thomas murmured, trying to decide whether he wanted to park or drive us right back out of the low-walled area.

"Not until I was ready for the ambush," I whispered back as Mouse sat up.

"Why are we whispering?" Undyne asked in a breathy whisper loud enough to make it back around to a normal speaking volume.

"Undyne," I told her firmly as Thomas finally parked just in front of the exit, the car pointed toward it. "I need you to focus here. Look around. Do you see anybody walking in this area, on any of these streets, despite how close we are to the hospital? The day just started. Somebody should be moving out here, but no one is. Those tires? All slashed. Somebody wants people, and not many of them, stuck here. Keep your guard up, and listen if Mouse tells us something, got it?"

For all her bluster and shouting, she seemed to realize we meant to take things seriously. She nodded, flexing her hand like I'd seen her do before conjuring one of those blue spears. "I should have worn my armor."

I chuckled softly. "Preaching to the choir here. I really missed my equipment yesterday."

I was lucky I'd gotten back my gun and force ring, even with the loss of my blasting rod. I'd have to carve another one eventually. Another thought for another time. We all checked ourselves for gear as we got out of the car, the doors swinging like great bank vault doors. Undyne pulled a latch to let me out of the back, Mouse following, and Thomas popped the trunk to grab the Monsters' party favors.

We may have only had Undyne along with us, but Alphys had insisted we take some semi-modern walkie talkies with us. Even me, despite my insistence they wouldn't work for long if I had one.

"T-take it anyway," she'd managed to say. "If we want to understand the interactions between modern technology, and- and human magic, we need to have more, um, more data points to draw our conclusions from. P-please."

Then she'd sputtered a little more and told me I didn't have to if I didn't want to.

I took one from Thomas and clipped it to my duster's left pocket as he clipped his to a belt loop. Undyne took a third. We left the one we'd gotten for Mouse behind as a backup.

"Hey, Alphys! Come in Alphys! Uh, over," Undyne spoke into the little box.

Thomas shook his head, then reached over and turned the dial. It clicked, and a little hiss of static informed us it was then turned on. "You either need to hit this button here," he indicated a little black rubber patch on the side, "to make it send, or you need to turn this dial so it's constantly sending and receiving. I recommend the former for now."

Undyne smiled awkwardly, and I quietly turned the dial on my own radio, glad she'd been the one to screw that up so I hadn't had to. I'm not exactly up to date on gadgets like radios. If I'd ever watched Star Trek, maybe I'd know a bit more about them, but I was firmly stood in the Star Wars geekdom.

The byplay was a good way distraction from the impending sense of doom I was feeling from the morgue, but it was getting stronger. I could practically feel the air moving, pressing with unhearable sound pounding against us rhythmically, like somebody had a huge bass somewhere thumping to some beat too low for humans to hear.

Mouse growled, just barely, tensing up.

Apparently I wasn't the only one.

Undyne conjured a spear, taking a stance of her own, and I took a deep breath, smelling the crisp morning air. I might have felt more comfortable if it had been gloomy and dark. At least then I wouldn't have cognitive dissonance over the competing sensations of safety and unease.

"Thomas to Alphys, come in Alphys," my brother said out loud.

"Alphys here, uh, over," all of our radios chirped.

"I'm going to leave my radio on constant send, so you should hear us as we proceed. There's something wrong here, so don't send any messages unless you absolutely have to. You might startle something we're trying to sneak up on."

"...oh, oh-Okay. I'll just listen, and watch, and not… do anything…" Alphys trailed off.

"We'll call if we need you," I spoke up.

We didn't get a response, but then, I guess we'd said not to. I nodded to the others.

"Let's go," I told the crew.

The visitor's entrance immediately destroyed any remaining happy thoughts I might have been having, and I fought down a taste of bile at the smell. Sterilized air doesn't mix well with a faint hint of sickly, infectious copper, and the cool temperature the morgue always kept was only marginally warmer than outside. The reason for the smell was painted on the wall behind the security desk you have to pass in the lobby, splatters I'd guess were from the heart beating after someone had been nearly decapitated. I idly noted the angle of the splatter, up and to the right, like the victim had turned and fallen against the wall as he fell, leaving a small pool on the ground. That pool, in turn, turned into a long, dragging stain around the corner, through the door and into the medical examiner's offices.

Some small, dark part of my mind told me the effect was somewhat ruined by the florescent light bulbs buzzing overhead, lighting up the room completely. Another part wondered if whatever was waiting for us simply didn't give a damn if we knew it was there.

"Is this… regular… for morgues?" Undyne asked hesitantly, slowly walking forward.

I held up my staff to stop her. "No. No it isn't. So don't touch anything that might turn into a mons- er, I mean-"

"I knew what you meant," she cut me off with a glare. "Your monsters aren't our Monsters," she emphasized the Capitalization. "So don't bother apologizing. We know you don't mean us."

"We've got heavy bloodstains at the Morgue entrance, no security guard to greet us. Poor bastard probably died quickly," Thomas narrated for Alphys' benefit, ignoring the byplay. He looked at me. "You still want to go through with this?"

A slight thumping sound echoed from further in, like something smacking a wall frantically, from behind the double doors the bloodstain was obviously meant to lead us down. I shook my head, grimacing at the increased pounding of silence in my ears, like the base outside had been turned up all the way. "I don't want to be here. But we need clues. And if somebody is left alive in there, we need to get them out."

"You know what we're getting into," Thomas didn't word it like a question.

I shook my left arm, freeing up the shield bracelet I wore there from my duster's sleeve. "You can wait here if you want. I'm going in."

I stepped neatly around the bloodstain, leading the group into the room with my staff.

The empty pounding from outside beat into the walls, setting my teeth on edge. I walked slowly, looking left and right at each of the rooms as we moved further in, keeping an eye out as we passed the doors with little viewing windows. For all the gore I might have expected, the rooms were all sterile, not a drop of blood out of place. None except the steadily thinning lines on the floor toward a room in the back, where my favorite Medical Examiner normally worked. Normally, I'd follow the sounds of polka music to find the M.E.'s office, but the blood trail got us there instead. The tapping we'd heard was getting louder as we approached, more frantic, a chilling counterpoint to the impossibly heavy, incessant bass beat.

I pushed open the door, and saw that the blood trail had thinned and ended with a bloody handprint on one of the eight steel doors that marked the holding drawers for corpses to be examined. Something was beating against the door from the inside. I met Thomas' eyes, then glanced at Undyne somewhere close enough for her to see mine, and finally down at Mouse. His hackles were up, his light growl barely cutting through the gloom.

I reached up, shield bracelet held firm, then yanked the drawer open and jumped back.

Coughing, a pair of bloody hands reached out and grabbed the walls, pulling himself, and the drawer, out into the room.

"Butters!" I called, stepping forward.

The scrawny medical man was laying on top of an overweight security guard's corpse, and he shoved himself off of it and onto the ground, gasping for air. I dropped my staff and shot to his side, getting him turned over and into a sitting position while his face slowly turned from a light blue back into a faint pink.

"Broke the safety," he coughed, "shouldn't… have been stuck… in the drawer."

"Breathe, man, breathe," I urged him, and looked him over for injuries. His green hospital smock had the dried remains of the guard's blood on his front, and his knuckles were bruised and bloodied from beating on the inside of the metal door. In contrast to the rest of him, his fluffy bunny slippers were unmarked.

With a breathing exercise, Waldo Butters managed to finally calm down enough to get his bearings. He looked around at the four of us, then caught a glimpse of something in the corner. He blinked a few times, pointing to it. "I was going to play that at Oktoberfest," he told us. I looked over and saw a huge drum and one-man-band kit, something you'd strap to your chest or back, and it was ripped into pieces.

A deep voice called down the hall before I could do anything more about the little medical examiner, and Undyne lifted her spear at the ready at the door.

"Dresden," the voice echoed down the hall, sounding amused. "Welcome, once again, to the morgue. You're rather late this time, aren't you? No matter. As usual, you've taken the bait. As usual, you're going to die."

The heavy pounding somehow further increased in volume, and Mouse jumped over me. I ducked and dragged Butters, now blabbering nonsensically, away from the wall of drawers. The security guard Butters had been trapped with had sat up in the metal bed, and Mouse had his teeth around the guard's slashed throat. The thing tried to bear hug Mouse's huge frame, but with a blue flash around his teeth, Mouse broke its neck.

The other seven metal drawers shook, then started breaking open, revealing faces with empty eyes, some wearing medical smocks, others thin sheets, and a naked man with a chunk of rebar speared through his ribcage. Apparently the other safe-escape hatches weren't broken. That, or they'd just smashed their way out with sheer force.

"Shit!" I cried as Thomas' blade cut into one and Undyne speared another through the eye. I forced myself to my feet, snatching at the revolver in my duster's pocket, bringing it to bear while my staff rolled toward the wall. I fired wildly, only half of the six shots going into the zombies while the others ricocheted off the metal doors they'd burst out of. I half dragged, half carried Butters away as I shoved myself up, toward the door we'd come in through, but it burst open with even more corpses, reaching down for us.

"Defendarius!" I shouted, dropping Butters to bring my left arm around. A dome of my focused willpower came up just in time to catch the hoard smashing down. I was close enough to the door that my barrier bottlenecked the bloodied, broken bodies of the ex-living, forcing them against the edges of the wide door, unable to push past me into the room. I could feel every strike as I caught my breath, but there wasn't a hope in hell of them breaking it down.

Holding them back, I turned to watch Thomas floating like a leaf in the rain, easily sidestepping and dodging every wild swing, parrying and chopping his pale opponents to pieces. Next to him, Undyne's spear worked overtime, stabbing forward, darting back, stabbing forward again. She stepped back, dropped down, then stabbed toward the roof, and a huge mass of blue spikes shot out of the ground and skewered most of the remaining bodies. Mouse wasn't in the fight; I looked down, and Butters was clutching my dog tight to his chest, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

I focused my attention back on my side of the fight, where the sheer mass of bodies was threatening to push me back into the room. "Butters!" I called, "Grab my staff!"

"What?" He asked, lost.

"My staff! I need it to get us some breathing room!" I held my left wrist forward in my right hand. "Now would be good!"

I watched Butters out of the corner of my eye as he untangled himself from Mouse and crawled, hands and knees, over to the wall where my staff had come to rest. He grabbed it, turned around, and crawled back, keeping his head down as though bullets were flying overhead. I reached down, and he handed it to me, wrong-side-up. I spun it in my hand, pointed it at the back of my shield, and dropped the defensive wall.

For just one second, the hoard pushed forward.

"FORZARE!" The shout practically tore my throat as I dug deep for extra power, and a faint whiff of brimstone hit my nose as the wall of force tore forward. I didn't quite destroy the door, but hands were torn off when the zombies tried to keep hold of it as they were shoved back into the hall. I dropped the staff into the crook of my left arm and reached into my coat as I fell toward the ground, kneeling and pulling the chalk into my right hand in one swift movement. I spun in place, leaving a clear, perfect circle of chalk, then bounced up and back into the room. I took the staff in hand and shoved it down into the circle, infusing it with willpower.

The circle sprung to life just before the first zombie smashed into it, and I pressed my left hand against the invisible working to add the intent of my shield bracelet into the new, stronger barrier. It wasn't unbreakable, but they weren't getting through by pushing, either.

I turned back, staff held out, but there wasn't anything left to do. Thomas wiped his blade on the smock of one of the already-autopsied zombies, standing otherwise unconcerned among the corpses. Undyne was breathing hard, but when she caught my eyes, it was anger rather than exertion that fueled it. I quickly looked away; holding a spell through a Soul Gaze wouldn't be impossible, but I wasn't willing to chance it.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Butters kept saying, trying to make himself small against the wall. He was shivering, holding himself, rocking a little back and forth. "Oh god, oh god, oh god…"


	15. Actions Have Consequences

A.N. - It's sort of sad that my story has managed to stay on the most recent list of Dresden Files crossovers for several months. When I picked these two stories hoping to find a niche and expand on it, I didn't expect to be more than a third of the way done and remain the only person writing for this category. If I want mostly decent Dresden Files/Undertale fiction, I guess I just have to write it myself for now.

I'm still hoping somebody follows along and starts something new, writes a tangent or steals my ideas wholesale, but that might not be the case until I tag this story Complete. Until then, I'd like to encourage anyone thinking about writing a Dresden Files crossover to do so.

We continue! And we hope for more!

Enjoy.

* * *

Our resident Medical Examiner Waldo Butters was losing his loose connection to reality on the floor while Mouse tried licking his face to bring him back to sanity. Thomas and Undyne were keeping an eye on the chunks of meat they'd turned most of a dozen zombies into just in case they started moving again, and I was stuck by the door. I focused on holding the magic circle in front of it just in case somebody with a mortal soul wanted to try pulling it down. Oh, and there were about a thousand zombies trying to rip open the walls by the doorway to get around the shield. So there was that, too.

"Alphys," I called out, raising my voice over the zombies' clamoring. "We're currently experiencing a Night of the Living Dead in here. How're things on your end?"

Of course, I only got static in return for my troubles. Turns out a major act of Necromancy was more than enough to kill a few radios. That, or the energy in the air was cutting us off. I was betting on the former.

The zombies continued beating down on my circle at the doorway. I could probably let go of it, now that I was calmed down and thinking more clearly; a circle I'd empowered could hold up against just about anything short of a mortal using free will to cross it. I sort of doubted the Necromancer responsible for all this was close enough to do so. It was almost ironic. A hoard of zombies wouldn't budge it with a month of effort, but a reporter with a boom mic could cross like it wasn't even there, unless I added shields and reinforced it.

I focused on the positives of fighting against things without a will of their own, ignoring the face of a particularly zealous underweight man who was gnashing against the shield. His lips were torn, caught between the shield and his teeth. The corpses to his left and right broke their hands with how hard they kept beating against the circle.

"Ugh, what are these things?" Undyne asked, poking at some of the remains with her spear. "They don't have SOULs."

"...I'm just going to assume that's a Monster thing I can ask about later," I told her, and watched Thomas walk over to check on Butters. I also assumed my brother was just as freaked out about what she had said, but was hiding it better. "They don't have souls because they're undead. Instead of a soul, it's black magic powering them, probably binding them to whoever raised them from the dead."

She grit her sharp teeth and frowned. "Somebody brought these people back and stole their free will?! Are you _kidding me?!_ "

"I'm not an expert on black magic, but the short version is, yes. Except they aren't people anymore, they're zombies, and if that magical connection is lost, it's entirely possible that they'll rampage and kill people. Or they'll stand around doing nothing. I don't actually know. Shortly after _that_ , they'll go back to being dead. These aren't people anymore," I insisted again. "They're more like angry extensions of the murderous intent of the necromancer who raised them. So please, _please_ , don't hold back fighting them. If anything, only be careful killing the one who raised them, him you could get in trouble for killing with magic. I think."

"Be that as it may," Thomas cut in, "we're currently trapped inside a barely secured building with a Doctor in shock. Perhaps this could wait until we've gone somewhere more safe?"

I waved my staff toward Thomas. "What he said."

Undyne held up her radio and spun the dial around and clicked the rubber button a few times futilely, then threw it at the ground where it exploded into plastic shrapnel. "Fine. Let's go."

Butters' eyes shot up, bloodshot and wild. "Go? Out there? Are you out of your mind? Those things were _dead_! And now they're not! How can they do that, how can they just, just, just live and move and fight?" He shook his head, rubbing his temples. "It's like the human-like corpses all over again!"

Mouse tried to lick his face, but he was lost back to staring at nothing. I whistled, a sharp noise, and he looked up to face me from his spot on the floor.

"Listen to me, Butters," I told him, stepping away from the circle to kneel down next to him. "We're going to get through this, alright? We're stronger than this, and I need you to stand up and walk out with us. Alright?"

His eyes shot to the creatures pounding on my shielded circle, and I grabbed his face to force him to meet my eyes.

"Don't look at them, look at me. They don't matter. It's just us, and walking out of here. Can you do that for me, Butters?"

He shook his head violently, then pointed one shaking hand to the corner of the room where his drum-kit lay broken apart. "T-they killed my Polka…" he whispered. "I could almost remember, you saying-"

"Polka will never die," I said with him, not sure where it came from. He nodded shakily.

I took a deep breath. "Butters, they killed a drum. They sure as hell didn't kill Polka, and even if it's a little down right now, it isn't going to stay there. We're going to get the hell outta here, and by God, I'll buy you a new drum kit if I have to."

His face held the kind of yearning you only see in those who have decided all hope was lost, but that maybe, just maybe, there's one last chance. Just one. Like an abused puppy trying to wag its tail at the first sign of kindness it's had in years.

"Really?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper. "Polka… isn't dead?"

"No," I told him firmly. A crack tore through the air, and the four of us besides Mouse jerked at the sound. One of the undead had broken a bone. "No," I repeated. "Polka may have fallen on hard times, but it will rise again, like the Republic after the fall of the Empire. Polka will rise again!" I shouted. "Say it with me, Butters! Polka will rise again!"

"P-Polka will rise again," he tried it out.

"Polka will rise again! Louder!" I shouted at him. "Louder!"

"Polka will rise again!" He shouted back.

"Louder!"

"POLKA WILL RISE AGAIN!" He yelled, and Thomas reached down to offer him a hand up. "Polka will rise again!" he shouted, taking the hand and allowing himself to get pulled to his feet. "Polka will rise again!"

I turned to the others, and spoke around his new mantra. "I'll lead with my shield up. Thomas and Mouse will help keep Butters moving and watch for anything coming out of the doors between us and the exit. Undyne, can you keep them off us while we move?"

"I can do more than that," she boasted with an evil grin, spear held in her left hand. "I'll take all of 'em down!"

She reached out to her sides grandly, a second spear appearing in her right hand, then pointed both of them past me into the hallway. She growled, the sound building into a roar, and crossed the spears into an X pointed down. She swung them up and out, and probably a thousand spears exploded out of the ground and walls past my shield in the hallway, tossing the undead in all directions.

"HA! Take that, you freaks!"

I broke the circle holding the door as the spears faded to nothing, and we surged out to fight our way to the entrance.

As we pushed outside into the wake of Undyne's little spear-splosion, I was reminded of something I'd forgotten in the heat of the moment: fights are chaotic and dangerous. Thomas was supernaturally speedy and graceful, but I most certainly was not.

A hand caught my leg in the first step, and I tumbled face first into the hall, where the zombies were already trying to pull together to continue the assault. The upper half of a person's torso reached out to grab at my eyes, but a hand on the back of my duster pulled me out of the way. Thomas stepped past me as he shoved me to the wall and out of the way, and he stabbed the thing in through the top of its skull.

Butters, of all people, caught me, his eyes wild, and I took up my staff as the horde pushed ever closer from all sides, including those who had lost limbs other than their heads on the ground.

"Everyone, brace against something," I shouted, then squared myself up near the wall, drawing in power while the others stabbed, shoved and bit at the mass of bodies that tried to swarm us. With a deep breath, I called on the wind. "Ventas Servitas!"

A gale force wind tore past us in the small hallway, and only scrawny Butters still holding my coat kept me on my feet. Broken hands clutched at us as they were thrown out of the way, and I howled as fingernails tore across my exposed face, barely missing my eye and catching my eyelid instead. Half my vision was blurry with tears and blood in moments.

I managed to stumble to the middle of the hall, raising my staff again, and shouted once more, pouring the newfound agony from my face into the spell. "Ventas Servitas!"

The spell broke at my back and rejoined in front of us, and I howled again as I fought to keep the spell going. I didn't raise my shield like I'd said I would, just threw more and more wind down the hall, turning the howls into more shouts, "Ventas! VENTAS!"

Butters kept me standing in the windstorm, kept me from being tossed about like the creatures we were fighting, and slowly, we moved forward. If anyone had a gun, anything I'd have needed my shield for, we were toast, and I poured that fear into the spell, too.

The doors at the end of the hall were blown open, and somehow, even with the undead trying to catch us from the doorways we'd passed, we managed to force our way through.

"Ventas Servitas…" I gasped, having barely stopped to breathe as we'd moved. I wanted to drop right there until I could refill my lungs with air, but there wasn't any time. Black spots danced on the edges of my vision between the dark blur my left eye had become, and I stumbled forward toward the entrance doors with the others, even as the undead were trying to climb to their feet for another attack. I just had to hope the others could take us from there.

I blinked as we stepped outside, into the light and a surprisingly gentle breeze, the drumming sensation we'd been feeling pushing into my ears, pounding against my temples. Just outside the Morgue's entrance, our Oldsmobile had been dragged forward, and the tires ripped clean off.

If you could call the bent metal where the tires had been torn off "clean."

A big man with pale, leathery skin was sitting on the hood, arms crossed, pointing a cruel smile at us with his narrow, yellow teeth. His hair was grey, and he had deep sideburns, and a scar turned up his lip around his sneer. He was wearing a duster that sort of looked like mine, and I sort of equated his whole look to Mr. Hyde trying on Mr. Jackal's skin.

"Mr. Dresden," he spoke with a thick british accent in his deep voice. "Mors vincit omnia. You look winded," he joked. "That'll make this easier." He stood up, shaking out his hands.

"You've stolen my look," I wheezed. "Looks terrible on you. Maybe it's your pathetic attempt to switch over to the Light side? Wouldn't be too late, you know."

"Hmph," His sneer turned into something pitying. "Mortuum flagellas. Even your last words are pointless. You will die as you have lived."

I could almost feel Thomas at my back, Mouse at my side, Undyne readying her spear… and Butters, quietly whispering, "Polka will rise again." They were counting on me, expecting me to pull together with some new trick, some new genius plan to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. What we needed, I realized, was time.

I made my decision.

"RUN AWAY!" I screamed, raising my arm. " _Defendarius_!"

"What?!" the man cried out, then shouted, "Kill him! Kill them all!"

I don't know who was carrying me this time as I stumbled backwards, left arm held high. More undead were running toward us, sprinting, and now that I could see them in the light, I confirmed that these weren't just decaying undead, but killers with blank eyes and purpose, ready to chase us to the ends of the Earth. We didn't have a hope in Hell at winning this fight, so I was changing the rules.

"Polka will rise again!" Butters screeched, and I yelped as I was tossed tail over teakettle over the fence surrounding the Morgue's parking lot. I wiped at my face as stinging drops of blood got in my eye again, and did my best to get back on my feet. I was still trying to get my bearings when I stumbled into a black, low-riding car, and I could feel something pulsing inside it.

It felt disgusting against senses.

I didn't take a moment to think about it. I got both hands on the car, and hissed, "Hexus!"

My spell broke through whatever the machine was powering, and the oppressive air lifted.

"NO!" I heard Leatherface shout from the parking lot, and a moment later, I could hear something pounding in rhythm again, much quieter, from his direction. Thomas got a hand on me as I giggled hysterically, and we got moving again. The zombies didn't follow.

"Polka will rise again," I promised myself.

This wasn't over.

We were tired, hurt, and half crazy, but we'd gotten Butters out. It was a win. A small win, but a win. All we needed now was to regroup and hit back.

And I knew just the wolves to help us out.

"The Alphas," I told the others as we bravely ran away. "We need to get to the University."


	16. Talking is Not a Free Action

The last chapter, Consequences, took me three months. I went weeks at a time with zero real progress. I kept hitting a wall on how to get the characters out of the morgue after locking them in, especially without death or serious injury. It could have been as easy as, "Dresden blew the walls open and they escaped," but I wanted it to feel more believable and compelling than that. The whole "Polka will rise!" section felt like a hot mess as well, and on the whole, I'd rather move on and fix it all later, if ever.

To get through it, I wrote a grand total of 40 pages of content that _wasn't_ the morgue, including 7 or so for this chapter. I'm talking about chapters in stories I don't plan to release, and 2 and some change in rough drafts on a book I'm writing.

So I released the last chapter and the rough, uncompleted draft of this chapter to my editors/reviewers at the same time on the 19th or so.

Alex looked it over and said, "Well, now you're on a roll. You can probably finish and release the next chapter in a week."

I laughed.

He was serious.

Alix was also on board, fixing _huge_ problems with Undyne's dialogue. Special thanks to them both for making the quick turnaround possible.

* * *

The early morning is not a deterrent to commuters who need to drive to work in Chicago. Cars were filling the roads, with nary an open taxi in sight. That meant we were jogging on the sidewalks, past the nearby hospital, on our way to backup from my furry friends at the university. It would have been only a couple minutes if we were driving, but those same three miles or so weren't so kind to pedestrians in a hurry.

It was only a few minutes into our journey that I discovered something new and exciting about my newfound fame. Apparently, if I can be seen covered in blood, running with my staff in hand and backed by other people also covered in blood and openly carrying weapons, then it means magical shenanigans are afoot. It used to be a loud signal to get away from the crazy blood-covered maniacs.

Now apparently it meant people were going to shout at me on the streets.

"What's going on?!" A yell came from the road, where people in cars had slowed traffic to a standstill. Pedestrians were also politely getting the hell out of the way ahead of us.

I decided honesty was the best policy. "Zombies at the morgue, stay away from it!" I called back.

Now, again, you need to understand that I normally am _not_ taken seriously when I say things like that, so I had to stop almost immediately afterwards when I heard several people scream. While Thomas was keeping pace, Butters had almost ran into me. I stumbled, and pointed my staff at the source, expecting we'd finally been followed. Instead, it was just some lady in her car, and several kids doing the same in response.

"Look," I shouted, realizing the problem. "It's not contagious, but they _will_ kill you! Just stay away from there, maybe get behind your thresholds! I'm working on the problem! And call the police to cordon it off or something."

Before we could continue, a red truck with huge tires and an extra half foot of lift off the ground pulled off the road and onto the sidewalk in front of us. We squared up, expecting a fight, but the driver's window rolled down and a heavyset man with a thick beard leaned out. He waved us over.

"Get in the truck!" He called out with a slight southern accent. "Wherever you're headed, I can get you there."

I was caught off guard. I'd never really had random civilians backing me up like this in a crisis before. I took a moment, then waved the crew over to him. I helped pull Butters up after me into the back seat; with the truck's suspension holding it up, it was a bit of a climb into the cab. Thomas took the front, and Mouse managed to jump way up over the side and into the truck bed as Undyne joined Butters and I in the back seat.

"Get us to the University," I told him as we all got our seatbelts on, and he quickly started honking and yelling at the others to get out of the way as his behemoth truck pulled around. "We've got friends there."

"You got it, Dresden," the man said, focused on the road. "How bad is it out there, anyway?"

"Just a couple necromancers trying to kill me and maybe all the new Monsters from the Underground. Not sure yet how much of the city they plan to tear up," I admitted, catching my breath. I watched out the window as we drove on, our new friend liberally leaning on his horn and navigating around traffic snarls on the wrong side of the road.

"Should my daughter and I get out of the city tonight?" he asked, looking around for his next illegal maneuver. "I know she's been looking forward to Halloween tomorrow night, but if there's gonna be real zombies, maybe we should just take a vacation."

"That might be best," I told him, closing my eyes for a moment. "That, or behind the best threshold you can find. Maybe Saint Mary of the Angels' church."

I laid back, coming down off the adrenaline. The day had just started, and I was ready for it to end. No real chance of that happening. I vaguely noted Thomas taking over to explain the concept of a threshold to the attentive man, how the sense of family and home could hold off supernatural threats, the homey-er, the better. Unless you invited the threats in, of course.

Butters was muttering. Better that than catatonic.

I kept my eyes closed, thinking about the mess we were in, and the help I was about to ask for. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't go to the Alphas for more than a place to lay my head for a few hours. They were good kids over at the college, but they were still _kids_. They didn't need to get involved in the big leagues with me and the Necromancers, especially with their only magical trick being the ability to shapeshift into wolves at will.

Today was not ordinary circumstances. Today was bad circumstances, and I had a terrible gut feeling that the city was going to get much worse before it got better. With Halloween coming up, as I'd been reminded, just tomorrow evening, the barrier between life and death was going to get thinner. Ghosts got stronger, the dead got restless, and I had to deal with the aftermath more often than not.

It would also be my birthday. I'd try to remember to blow a party horn in celebration between the encounters with psychopaths.

"We're here," the bearded man told us as we came to a stop. "Good luck with whatever this is, Dresden. We're all rooting for you."

"Uh, thanks," I told him, taking off my seatbelt. "I'll get it fixed as soon as I can."

We got out and the man saluted us, then drove off after Mouse jumped out of the back of his truck. I noted that he had stopped halfway up on a curb, but nobody bothered him about it after they saw who had gotten out. I realized people were pointing at me. A few already had their cell phones out and were either calling out or pointing them at me.

I ignored them and we started heading over toward the Alphas' rooms.

"I get that I'm a little famous," I said to nobody in particular, "but I didn't realize that extended to random people on the streets backing me up when I look like I've gone ten rounds with Tyson in a jam factory. What gives?"

Undyne chuckled and Thomas cleared his throat to answer me as we jogged, Butters trailing a bit behind with Mouse. "You don't know? Everyone was interested in what you've been doing behind the scenes of every spooky crime in the last few years, and SI has had to go back over the cases you've been involved in. To actually tell the truth rather than blame it on terrorism or whatever sounds logical," he clarified. "While you're not wanted for crimes against Chicago… yet... the internet has a good idea of what you've been up to, and the news has gone international about some of it. You're Chicago's Resident Wizard. Trademarked."

"How am I _trademarked?!_ "

"I put in for it," Thomas laughed. "I planned to tell you tomorrow, but then… this."

"Yeah," I huffed. "This."

We arrived to the Alphas' apartments soon after, and they were expecting us. The Alphas are, as one might expect from individuals living on or near the campus, college students. They're also shifters, and their particular flavor of transformation is wolf. While they weren't ready to throw down with the likes of Dr. Death, they had staked their claim on all the campuses and kept low level threats in check for almost as long as I'd known them. I had never brought them completely up to speed with the magical world at large because I wanted to keep them from getting caught up in the middle of it all.

Their leader, Billy Borden, gave me a slow once over, stopping on my messed up eye. Billy had gotten taller since I'd last seen him, and the last of his acne and flab was almost gone around his new muscles. He, like most of the Alphas, wore loose clothing that could be shed quickly if he had to go lupine. Today it was grey sweats.

"Harry," he said, voice tight. "Your problems have become the entire city's problems, and we've been caught with our pants down. Tell me you're here to bring us up to speed _without_ telling us to go hide in a hole somewhere?"

I grimaced. "At this point, I'm inclined to tell _everyone_ to find a good hole to hide in. Until we can regroup and take the fight back to them, I was hoping you would share yours."

He crossed his arms, standing firm. "You need our help. We want to give you that help. We can't if we don't know what we're up against."

"I'm with him," Butters spoke up, and I turned to see him with my good eye, startled. "If I'm caught up as a hostage to get to you, I think I'm in far enough to deserve to know why."

I looked at Thomas, who gave me a small shrug, his signal that he wasn't getting in the middle of this one. I sighed, trying to wipe my eye, but Butters grabbed my hand.

"Don't rub that, you'll make it worse," he told me.

I sighed again. It itched.

"I'll bring everyone up to speed, but I'd rather only do it once. Can we come in?"

Billy leaned over and gave me a few sniffs. He nodded. "Dresden and his friends may enter," he spoke formally, then turned and led us inside.

Several other Alphas were waiting for us in their semi-muscled glory, the rewards of an athletic lifestyle. I saw Georgia, Andi and Kirby in the living room/kitchen combo, standing around a table with a map spread across it, and another guy whose name was on the tip of my tongue was passing out sandwiches. A circle of salt had been laid in the middle of the floor, and another girl, Marcy I think, sat waiting in it. Two more of them, Cindy and Phil, were sitting on a long leather couch, watching the news; it was showing a weather forecast at the moment.

Mitchell, that was his name, handed Phil a sandwich and noticed us coming in. He whistled, looking us over. "Rough, man."

Everyone but Marcy came to meet us and help carry wounded if need be, and Georgia raised her eyebrows at my condition. "Here, take a seat," she ordered. "I'll get the first aid kit."

The map was cleared from the table as I sat heavily in one of the chairs the Alphas hadn't been using, and Butters, still in his bloody scrubs, went into the kitchen to wash his hands a few times. As the only graduated Doctor among us, he had accepted grudgingly that he was going to have to look over any injuries.

"I became a medical examiner to get away from live patients," he grumbled. It was the same argument he always gave when I asked to be treated outside of the hospital, where my magical interference might kill some poor sap's heart monitor.

Somebody got him a set of clean clothes, but he told them he'd wait until after a shower.

As it turned out, Thomas had broken a few fingers at some point, but his own supernatural healing had taken care of it; his eyes lingered over some of the female Alphas, but he kept his inner demon under firm control. Undyne was scratched in a few places, but only needed a few band aids. Butters himself had pulled a muscle in his arm when he had thrown me over the fence on our escape from the morgue (which I was amazed by; he's maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet). He said it hurt, but wouldn't prevent him from helping me.

After a careful washing of my face off and a little peroxide poured over everything just in case (then washing everything again to get the peroxide out), it turned out I needed three stitches. My request for an early morning beer was declined, as the medical kit had some lidocaine or something in it instead.

While I tried to hold still, Butters put stitches in my eyelid. To distract myself, I answered whatever questions anyone had on magic and magical threats. At that point, they weren't giving me much choice, and it helped to have something to focus on while I firmly gripped the edges of my seat.

"If we die because of something you could have told us and didn't, that's on you," Billy had told me. He wouldn't be the first I'd lost trying to protect that way. I wasn't happy, but I told him what he wanted to know.

After I'd explained to them what I knew about the necromancers, Butters declared that he was done and needed to shower for a week. "Don't let those stitches get pulled out, and don't rub it," he warned me. "I'm not going to perform surgery on you if your eye develops a droop because you didn't take care of it."

With that, I asked for a quiet place to sit and think. I promised I'd tell them more on the threats of the magical world after our current problems had been handled. They told me the bedroom had another couch and TV, so that's where I went. Glasses of water were being handed out, so I grabbed one.

"Undyne," I called her over. "Do you have a minute? There are some things I've been meaning to ask you."

"Yeah, sure," she said, sounding a bit distracted. "Hey, can we call Alphys and the others from here? I want to let them know we're alright."

"Can it wait a few minutes?" I asked as the TV flickered. I focused on keeping my emotions down and edged away from the expensive machine. "This shouldn't take too long."

"Fine," she said. "If you really think it can't wait or whatever."

I lead her to the back room, then closed the door behind us and sat down on the couch, leaning back. She flopped down on the couch next to me and dumped her glass of water over her face. I resisted the urge to apply my palm directly to my own as the water got everywhere.

"Great. Do you remember when you asked what zombies were, because you said they don't have souls?" I asked her, pulling up my duster as the water tried to slide over to my side of the couch.

"Yeah, you said you wanted to talk about something I said. What was it?"

I thought back. "Something along the lines of, 'somebody used magic to bind these people to their will.' Which is illegal, by the way, so if you ever find somebody who does that kind of thing, you're right, it's wrong."

"Alright. So, what did you want to talk about if we both already know that?" she asked, not bothering to get up.

"Hmm. I guess for starters, what do you think a necromancer actually is?"

"I dunno, some humans who wear black robes and use magic to kill people and bind their will?" she guessed offhandedly.

"Undyne, do you know anybody who has come back from the dead or brought somebody back themselves?" I asked, trying to prod her into revealing something.

"Oh, yeah, the Amalgamates," she said, as apparently it wasn't a secret. "And Alphys, she brought them back with her Determination experiments. Their families were happy to have them back despite what happened, what with a bunch of monsters fusing into combined creatures, so it all worked out in the end."

I blinked a few times while my brain processed the new information. I felt like a record player skipping the music notes and replaying the last section of music over and over again as more pieces of the puzzle tried to come together, and I realized that whatever I said next, I needed to be very, very careful.

"So Alphys is a Necromancer then."

Thank you mouth, you useless moron.

Undyne sat up all the way and looked at me with wide eyes, her mouth kept closed. She blinked, I blinked, we did the whole lost-in-shock thing together. She broke the silence first.

"OK, so maybe I don't know what a necromancer is," she admitted. "Alphys is a good person though. Just because she was experimenting with SOULs and Monsters who had fallen down, that doesn't change anything. She's smart, and if you ask her, she could probably help you understand whatever you're thinking about," she was getting louder, trying to convince me. "She isn't a bad guy like them."

"Almost nobody believes they're the bad guy, Undyne," my mouth continued at normal volume, hopefully saving my ass for once rather than digging me in deeper. "If you can only make a perfect world by destroying people's lives, it isn't a perfect world at all." Or it could say that. That wasn't going to backfire.

Undyne jumped to her feet and pointed at my face, and it took a lot of willpower not to throw my shield up in an instant; she wasn't holding her spear, but if she reached for power, I'd be ready for her. "She's a good person!" Undyne insisted. "Everybody makes mistakes, and she did everything she could to make it better afterwards! They're fine, alright?! They're with their families and they love them!"

I carefully raised my hands in surrender, not willing to push the point. "Fine. Alphys is a good person who made mistakes and did what she could to fix them. No arguments. But can you at least tell me what you mean when you keep referring to people's souls?"

"Ugh, just… just wait a second, OK?" she stepped back. "Here, it's this."

What followed was perhaps one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had, and while it wasn't a Soul Gaze, I doubted it was something I would ever forget.

One moment, I was sitting on the couch and Undyne was reaching forward. The next, I was having an out of body experience as she pulled her hand toward herself. The world became dulled and distant, like the haze around the speaking stones I had used with Ebenezer. A little red heart-shaped thing had come out of my chest, and I could _feel it_ hovering around in the air, like a phantom limb I could just barely control.

All of that was secondary to the feeling of my life, my magic, everything I was _oozing out of my chest into the little red heart_.

"That's your SOUL," Undyne pointed to it. "It's like the essence of who you are."

I felt vulnerable, exposed, naked like I never had been before. I couldn't move, could barely breathe from the raw terror I felt at those first three little words. It was _my soul_.

All at once, I understood exactly why the White Council wanted these Monsters exterminated.

"Undyne," I choked out, trying desperately not to panic as I mentally fought to bring myself together. "Put. That. Back."

"Fine, jeez," she muttered, helping push it back into my body. "It's not like I was gonna Fight you or anything…"

The sensation of the red heart re-entering my body was disorienting, and I might have blacked out for just a moment as my vision reestablished itself behind my eyes. I tried to get my breathing back under control as my heart, my real heart, tried to tear itself in half pumping blood and what little adrenaline I had left throughout my system.

It took me a few moments, but eventually I managed to calm down enough to speak.

"What the fuck is wrong with you YOU CRAZY GODDAMNED _FISH?!_ " I screamed. "You _took out my soul_ and _showed it to me?!_ Are you out of your goddamned _mind?!_ "

Undyne flinched. "Hey, I didn't-"

"THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THAT WOULD MAKE THAT OK, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!" I shouted her down.

"No!" she shouted back. "I don't! Why don't you explain it to me, like the dumb fish I am?!"

I took a shuddering breath and stood up to walk over to the wall. My hands were shaking, and I didn't want to turn my back to her, but I couldn't stand to look at her.

This was it, I realized.

This was the secret danger of Monster kind that had led people to lock them away and bury their memories.

The details were irrelevant, no matter how they wanted to spin it. I'd already known that Monsters could take people's souls when they died, but it wasn't until that moment that I understood exactly what it meant.

God help me. I was scared, I was angry, and I wanted the mob of torches and pitchforks to bury the problem in a hole, never to be worried about again.

For a few moments, I hated her.

…

It passed. I don't know exactly how long we both stood there, but eventually I managed to bury away the problem in my mind, rather than bury the fish who had made me feel that way. Undyne was shifting uncomfortably, and I dimly remembered Bob telling me that her people could feel emotions or be hurt by them, if I was too angry. Maybe she could feel how much I hated her just now. She might have even realized how much I'd panicked if it were true.

I kept focusing on slowing my breathing.

She couldn't have known. Hell's Bells, she hadn't even thought it was a big deal.

Finally, I managed to work my way back over to the couch, and I sat down. This time, I shook the shield bracelet out of my duster's sleeve.

She noticed.

I didn't care.

"Undyne," I managed to say, keeping my voice even. "I don't ever want you to do that to anyone again. Ever. And when we get home, back to your mansion with all of your friends, I want you to tell everyone that can do that that they are never going to do it again. _Ever._ Because that? Was scary. And humans destroy things that they don't understand that scare them. I'm pretty sure you had a war on the subject."

She flinched. Given that she'd spent the majority of her life underground, probably hearing about the history of that war, living the aftermath of it, I somehow doubted she would forget.

"It's different for us," she said firmly. "Monsters can touch each other's SOULs without hurting one another. SOULs are way, way stronger than you're pretending they are."

I shook my head. "What happens when a soul is destroyed, then?" I asked, still fighting to keep my voice even. "Last I checked, it means there's no chance of an afterlife. Zippo. Nada. _Nothing_. And a whole lotta humans will fight you _forever_ if they think you'll put that at risk. What you did to me? I felt like I could die, from the moment it started to the moment it ended. It was _terrifying_. Alright?"

Undyne was slowing down, looking slowly around at nothing, like she trying to figure out where I was coming from. Finally, still looking into the distance, she spoke. "We care about each other, you know?" she said slowly. "All of us. Even Jerry. We'd never put each other's SOULs at risk. Not even human SOULs, we wouldn't risk them being lost like that. I guess I just forgot for a moment that humans… don't protect each other like that."

"It's not about trust or- or maybe it is, I don't know," I tried to say. "But messing with somebody's immortal soul is wrong. It's wrong on a moral, immutable level." I clenched my fists. "It's scary, it's dangerous, it's- I don't know what it is. Even if somebody tells you to do it, just… don't. Please."

She shook her head, frustrated.

We didn't say anything for a while. I wondered idly how much of that our neighbors in the next room had heard. I had a lot more questions, about Alphys and her necromancy, but for right then, I just wasn't up for it.

"It stands for Determination," she finally said.

"What?" I asked, sitting up.

"Your SOUL is red. That means Determination. Like Frisk. It stands for willpower, never giving up, strength of character… it means you're strong. I probably couldn't have hurt you if I tried."

"You wanna run that last one by me again?" I asked, somewhere between curious and annoyed.

She was looking away, like we she was remembering something. "I haven't told anyone this before, but when I first met Frisk… the kid insulted me. Did you know that?" she asked. "Crazy kid… I was ordered to capture 'em, or take their SOUL hostage, and I broke one of my spears in half so the kid could put up a good defense, rather than get steamrolled. Like your shield there, you know? You've got one. But the kid… I threw a few spears at 'em."

I gave her a Look.

"I know, alright?" she said sheepishly. "We were stupid about humans before we came to the surface. We've been working on it. Anyway, so, I give the kid a spear to block my attacks. Give them a fighting chance, right? Only… the kid deliberately didn't block. At all. Just held the spear off to the side, like I was a great big joke. Took three spears to the SOUL, didn't even flinch."

I was caught between morbidly impressed and absolutely disgusted. I didn't interrupt. She took it as a sign to continue.

"Now, according to Frisk, Monster food is good for the human SOUL. Literally. It's like some kind of healing medicine."

That explained a lot, and raised even further questions.

"So Frisk just takes the shots, right to the core of their being. And what does the kid do? Nothing. Just stands there. I told 'em, 'I gave you that spear to block me, just hold it up and defend yourself!' ...so the kid deliberately pulls the spear out of the way and takes three more shots, right after I helped put the spear where it would have blocked me. Then the kid flips me the bird."

"Say what now?" I asked in surprise.

"Yeah," Undyne laughed. "That was what I thought! I mean, who just gets shot on purpose, over and over again? I made them hold the spear up again, told them to hold it right there, and the kid did it _again_! And then pulled out a Nice Cream and ate it, rather than fighting back!"

"An ice cream?" I asked, finding myself drawn into the story.

"Yeah, a Nice Cream! Meanwhile, I'm looking around for hidden cameras, because let's face it, I'm no slouch when it comes to attack magic. I had to ask myself, what is this kid made of? What are _humans_ made of? We have it written in our history books that in the war, we couldn't even kill a single one while they slaughtered thousands of us and… even though I had to keep fighting, to bring the kid to Asgore, I think that was the first time I realized how screwed we were if we had to fight another war with humanity. Anyway, I just thought you might want to know. About your SOUL, I mean. It's way, way stronger than you're giving it credit for and… it's red because you're filled with Determination."

"I've had a few Soul Gazes over the years," I admitted, "but no, I've never really wanted to know about that particular mirror before. I guess 'Determined' is as good a label for me as anything else."

She nodded, and tentatively sat back down with me on the couch.

I thought it over for a while while Undyne gradually leaned further and further down over the armrest, until finally I asked another question. "Hey, do they seriously say in your history books that you didn't kill any humans? In the entire war?"

She grimaced. "We lost really badly." She huffed. "Almost all our strongest soldiers got cut down at the start, in the opening attacks before we knew what was going on. Regular Monsters, not trained soldiers, had to fight just to keep our villages safe. I mean, there were still heroes, like Gerson, The Hammer of Justice- my old mentor- but there weren't nearly enough like him to put up a strong front. Between the sudden attacks by the wizards and with as many humans as there are, the war didn't last a month. We surrendered," she started clenching her fists, a habit I'd seen a lot of recently. "Everyone who could be was forced Underground. Those who refused were slaughtered. Then… seven insanely powerful wizards locked us away."

I remained silent. I was still processing everything she'd said earlier, trying to connect whichever dots I could, while she took time to ruminate on her people's losses.

Eventually, I spoke up again. "Undyne, you said that you beat Frisk up with magical attacks," I said. "Hit 'em right in the soul. Are you seriously saying the kid was fine?"

She looked up, and I had to repeat the question.

"Uh, yeah," she said, thinking back on it. "The kid's a powerhouse, even without killing anyone to boost their LOVE or EXP." She pronounced them 'love' and 'ex-pee.' "And Monster magic doesn't do too much to a human's physical body. It usually goes past to the SOUL. Monsters' bodies aren't really made of flesh, they're made of magic mixed with dust surrounding a SOUL, so… I guess that's why I'm not so hung up on showing you yours. We can see them because it's almost all we are, and the things that hurt humans' SOULs doesn't do much to ours unless we go out of our way, and normally… we don't." She shook her head. "That's the kind of stuff we grow up knowing. If you want specifics, you're going to have to ask an expert, like Alphys."

She narrowed her eyes at me.

"Don't hurt her."

"I won't," I sighed. "Just so long as she swears off killing or trying to bring back the dead."

Undyne looked like she wanted to hit me, but she swallowed her rage and looked pointedly away.

I had a feeling Alphys hadn't sworn off raising the dead, and if she kept it up… I had another feeling the White Council was going to come knocking. That could only ever end badly.

I didn't say anything more to Undyne about it. What could I say?

There was a tentative knock on the door. I looked at Undyne, who shrugged.

"Come in, we're done yelling," I said, and the door revealed Georgia. She looked grim.

"You're going to want to see this," she said quietly.

Undyne and I exchanged looks, and we got up to go see what it was. I nearly ran into the door jam with half my vision screwed up, but we both walked into the living room. Everyone was gathered around the TV except Marcy, who was standing in the circle, careful not to cross it. Was she there to help the others if another wave of whatever-it-was knocked us all out?

I put it out of my mind as I stood behind the couch. The reporter continued speaking.

"We're getting calls saying that Harry Dresden, Chicago's Resident Wizard, warned civilians to stay indoors, at home, behind their thresholds," she was saying. "While whatever is bring the dead to life isn't contagious, it has been confirmed that any corpses left behind could be brought back again to fight us. The National Guard has been called, and it is expected that a state of emergency will be declared very soon. We can only hope that it will be enough to keep what officials are calling a Zombie Apocalypse from ending further lives. This is Nancy Callahan with NBC news, and we will bring you more details as we get them."

The TV started to flicker, so Billy shut it off.

For a few moments, nobody spoke. They all looked at me.

I didn't say anything. For once, I didn't feel like making any snide comments.


	17. Looking For Leads

Normally, I tend to find myself alone, scared and with my friends either miles away or unable to help me deal with whatever magical mayhem is knocking on my door when things get really bad. Like I told the kid, Frisk: sometimes it's just you against the world, and you need to stand up and face all its evils head on. There are also times when you've got somebody watching your back, like my friends Michael and Murphy, or even more recently my brother Thomas. Other times I've faced down doom stark naked or on fire, both in the same week, and I've barely scraped through.

I'd never expected to hear about those same magical threats from the television, and it hadn't even occurred to me that I'd _ever_ have the National Guard called in for support. Finding myself alone might not turn out to be as much of an issue as it normally was.

Calling in the forces of humanity as a whole is the magical world equivalent of the nuclear option; once that genie is out of the bottle, you get the Salem Witch Trials or the current systematic extermination of the Black Court of Vampires. Once the word gets out, every child will learn about the threat and know how to fight back. And they _never stop_. If you kill a million humans, a _hundred million more_ are ready and waiting to take their places. And it only escalates from there.

Whether the world knew it or not, this immediate response to a threat could represent a shift in the very foundations of the magical world.

And here I was, smack dab in the middle of all of it, literally named on national television as a leading expert on the subject.

"What day is it?" I asked out loud.

"Sunday, the thirtieth. " Billy answered instantly. "Tomorrow is Halloween."

"Sunday, huh?" I mused. "Maybe that's why the roads weren't as full as I expected them to be. It feels like a Tuesday. And tomorrow's Monday, nothing good ever happened on a Monday."

"What are we going to do, Harry?" Thomas asked, looking at the assembled crew. "We need a game plan."

I shook my head, trying to get a handle on everything that was going on. I blinked, fighting the urge to itch at my eye. My view ended up on the table, where the Alphas had put their city map earlier, and I took my own out while I thought out loud. Two of the Alphas responded to the action, quickly taking it from me and smoothing it out on the table while I spoke.

"OK," I began slowly, "First and foremost, we start calling people. Friends, family- I know you wanted to call Alphys, Undyne." She nodded back to me. "Hells Bells, I'm pretty sure Chicago PD and SI wanted me to call yesterday, but I've just been so busy I didn't follow up with them."

The room at large, except for Mouse who remained alert and Butters, whom I remembered a moment later was taking a shower somewhere, joined us around the map.

"After we call anybody and everybody, we need to get in touch with the military," I continued, "So somebody needs to get them on the line and figure out what they'll be up to before Chicago finds itself in a shooting war with the zombies. Assuming they haven't already gotten started on that," I grimaced. "Like the lady on the news said, at that point people need to be indoors. Better yet, they need to get whoever there's room for them, into the churches, temples, synagogues, anywhere with a strong religious foundation. If those places can be fortified against the Red Court and this new Necromancer faction, then they'll at least be bunkered down."

"The Red Court's behind this?" Billy cut in, probably frustrated I hadn't emphasized that while answering questions earlier, but I waved him down.

"Allegedly," I admitted. "They hit the White Council hard yesterday, and they killed an entire city with some kind of nerve gas when the Wardens retreated. I don't believe in military coincidences for attacks that huge, and neither did my contact. The Vampires are also playing with Outsiders, so it sounds like they're not playing by the rules anymore. I doubt they're going to have the numbers to actually invade Chicago, but I'm not taking any chances. As a side benefit, religious establishments can keep out some serious mystical threats, and at the very least they've got some of the strongest thresholds in the city besides Michael's house."

I pointed to the black dot on the campus, and then another at the museum.

"These marks represent serious black magic, specifically Necromancy, that has been done recently according to my source for all things afterlife, Mortimer Lindquist. He's apparently going to flee the city, but this was his parting gift. If the Red Court is going to be crossing lines, I think it's high time we did the same."

I took a deep breath.

"I say, so long as the military is coming to town? We should point them in the right direction." I tapped the black mark on the campus. "We give them a copy of this map, we tell them to look over and fortify these locations based on their size, and we lock the Necromancers out of anything they might have left behind. I'm planning on going to each of these places myself to look for things nobody else can see, which frees whoever else is up for it to hound these Necromancers non-stop. Whatever's happening, I'm pretty sure it's going down tomorrow, on Halloween night. If we can keep them off their game for the next 48 hours or so, then I think they'll have to pack it in and go home."

I ran a hand through my hair.

"That's the overall plan. Some of it's reasoning, some is guesswork and gut instinct, but I think it'll work as something to shoot for. If you guys hook up with the police and give them the same rundown I gave you while Butters stitched up my face, then we can try to get everybody on the same page." I nodded. "Thoughts, anyone?"

I'd half expected the Alphas to be scowling at me for pushing them off to the side, but they were nodding along with me. Andi, one of the girls, spoke up. "It sounds like it'll work."

Thomas cleared his throat. "I'm guessing you weren't planning on going it alone between the sites, were you?"

I half shook my head. "I might have wanted to before, but that was before the National Guard was called in and the White Council essentially told me they couldn't send help. That, and there are now zombies walking the streets, apparently. I've never had to deal with something quite that blatant before, and I think the bad guys won't hesitate to just shoot me on sight like some creatures tend to."

"It's a start," Billy agreed. "Alright, we'll mark the locations on our map and meet up with the military while you go door to door. Alphas, get ready to move!"

"Thomas, Undyne?" I called my brother and the fish woman closer. "I've got something I need you both to do."

* * *

I was last to use the landline, giving me a few minutes to collect myself and get my emotions under control. My first, and maybe my only call, was going to be to SI.

"911, what is your emergency?" The cool voice asked over the phone.

"This is Harry Dresden, and I need to speak with whoever is in charge right now at SI."

"Harry Dresden?" the voice asked. "Please hold, we'll connect you through shortly."

I sighed as the phone reminded me to remain calm and stay on the line, an automated message. I would have called Murphy's desk directly, but given that she was out of the country, I didn't want to wait on a phone that wouldn't pick up. That, and for some reason I couldn't for the life of me remember SI's direct line. Maybe it was nerves catching up to me over the morning's mess.

"Hello?" the voice over the phone was considerably gruffer.

"Hello, this is Dresden," I responded.

"Thank fucking christ," the voice growled out. "Do you have any idea how hard we've been looking for you for the past hour? Reports have you last seen at the University, can we pick you up there? We have a lot of ground to make up, yesterday."

"Listen, no, I'm going straight to another location I've verified something serious went down at, Bock Ordered Books. You can pick me up there, right?"

The voice exhaled hard, but the voice responded, "Yes. We can meet you there. How bad is it going to be?"

"Compared to the morgue?" I asked him, scratching at the back of my head with my numb left hand, "Not as serious a mess, but it's got the same hallmarks of Necromancy, I just don't know exactly why yet."

"I've known you for thirty seconds and I already don't like the way you do things," the voice growled some more. "Before you go galavanting off into another firefight, would you spare a soldier some fucking intel on what exactly we're fighting out there?"

"Soldier?" I asked, but thought better of it before I got sidetracked and the phone exploded or something. "Nevermind, yes. Yes, I have several locations where these guys have either been seen or are going to be again, and I've got a map I'm sending your way with the exact locations. May I list them off for you now?"

I heard some shuffling around whatever mess was happening on the other end of the phone, and the voice said from a little farther away, "Go."

I listed the locations: the Museum, the University, the Morgue, Mac's Bar, the one I was heading toward at Bock Ordered Books, and another somewhere out past the interstate 90 toward Rockford.

"I'm sending a map, and the size of the circle should give you some inkling of how big a spell these guys have been casting at each of those locations." I refrained from mentioning the footprints on my own map, as we'd confirmed they weren't a problem. "If you can keep those places locked down, you may be able to force them away from their goals."

"What are their goals," another voice chimed in, a little farther away. They must have put me on speakerphone.

"Without talking it over with one of them, best guess says they're preparing something big for Halloween night, probably at midnight. When I say big, I mean the mess at the Morgue is going to look like small potatoes in comparison."

"How many of them are there?" the first no-nonsense voice cut in again.

"Six, I think, worth mentioning." I thought back to what Sans had told me. "A guy and a girl wearing black robes, one of them attacked me at Mortimer Lindquist's house. A guy covered in liver spots and may have arthritis. The next is responsible for this morning's attack on the morgue. Him, I've seen in person, got a good look at his face: he has grey hair, a scar turning up his lip, and was wearing a leather duster like mine. Tall, too, maybe six-three. He spoke with a British accent, don't know if that helps. Finally, there's the Capiorcorpus, or Corpsetaker, who I was warned can body-swap when she's about to die. Last I saw, she was between five-two and five-five, brown curls, pretty face with dimples, totally out of her mind but calm about it. If you fight her, do it from a distance."

"You said there were six worth mentioning. I count five. What'd you miss?" the voice demanded.

"Sorry, yeah, I was just thinking back to how she ate my magic last we fought," I told them. "She was working with a Ghoul, a supernatural assassin hitman. It eats people, and I didn't get a good look at him before his face elongated into a facefull of jackal's teeth. Super strength, hard as hell to put down, use bigger bullets," I finished. "You got all that?"

"Yes," The voice responded. "It's crap, but it beats the hell out of where we were five minutes ago. Any particular reason you want us to meet you at this bookstore rather than pick you up where you are now?"

"Uh…"

Andi, a redheaded Alpha who looked like she had just a touch too much coffee, was trying to get my attention. I waved her off for the moment, then continued. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I was hoping to get there before it became a huge scene. If there's something still there, the last thing we want is to scare it off to where we'll have to track it down again. If you could set up a perimeter a block out, it might be better than falling on it immediately. Other than the interstate, this is one of the spots that looks out of place on my map."

There wasn't an answer, and the line was silent. Either I'd been cut off, or they'd muted themselves.

"Guys, I'm going to need to get a move on. Can you put men on those places I told you about, just in case the Necromancer terrorists are still there or are going back?"

The sound of movement cut in on the line, and the second voice told me, "Yes, we'll handle it. We'll have people waiting around the bookstore. We're going to want to talk to you when we get there. Is that clear?"

The power went out. Thankfully, landline phones still work even with the power out, but it startled me that things had suddenly gone darker in the room.

"Shit, are you still there?" The voice asked.

"Yeah, I heard you. I'm going to get a move on. See you there."

I hung up the phone, and turned to Andi.

"What's up?" I asked. She stopped looking around at the outage and frowned at me.

"We didn't discuss who was going to back you up," she said simply. "We need to know how many of us are going with you."

I sighed, looking at the door, then back to her. "At this point, I think the _military_ is going to be my backup. Them plus Mouse should be more than enough to get me through the next hour."

"Oh, and it's going to take the entire Pack to explain to whoever's in charge about what we're up against?" She asked. "Not likely. Kirby and I are here to support you, whether you like it or not."

"Fine, great," I told her, annoyed. "Where is he and how soon can we go?"

"Bringing the car around with Mouse, and right now," she ignored my tone.

"Then let's get moving already."

* * *

As best as we could tell, most of the city was without power. With my warnings having been sent out by the morning news crews and police sirens blaring in all directions, the roads were a little easier to navigate then I might have expected, even for a weekend. It didn't take long to get to the nearby bookstore, so we parked half a block out in a red zone. I suspected the police had bigger things to worry about than parking tickets.

"I don't know what we might be getting into in there," I told the others before we got out of their newish Ford Focus; my legs barely fit, but I managed. "So just in case this turns out to be a battle of wits, I want my opponent to think I'm alone and unarmed. I want you two and Mouse guarding the front entrance, out of sight, and if we get any backup, I want you to send them around to the back, to block off the area. Any questions?"

None were forthcoming, so Andi and the messy, black-haired Kirby, athletes both, ditched their clothes (while I took interest in the sky) and morphed into their wolf forms. It was done in a flash, quicker than could be seen unless you were looking very closely, and I wasn't in the habit of staring at naked college kids. Mouse let out a small bark, and led the two of them off toward a side alley.

I stretched my legs, glad as I'd ever been that I'd taken up running. If today was going to be as long as I thought it was, I was probably going to be doing a lot of it over the next two days. I took my staff in hand, and strolled over toward the oldest occult bookstore in Chicago, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

The little bell tinkled as I stepped inside, and Bock himself was standing at the counter. He gave me a once over, folding his arms, but he didn't say anything even after his eyes stopped on my staff.

"Afternoon, Bock," I said. "Anything strange out among the shelves today?"

He huffed. "No more than usual."

I nodded to him, then started walking along the front aisle of the wooden shelves, looking for anything out of place.

The bookstore was a small, simple affair. It had somewhat plush carpets, old wooden shelves and a couple light bulbs covered in glass with small etchings, presumably to prevent them from breaking as often from wizards like me passing through.

Lo and behold, there was another customer there today. She was holding a copy of Die Lied der Erlking, going through the pages like she was looking for something, rather than reading them. Blonde, tall, curves everywhere I looked. If I pictured her wearing a hospital smock, with sterile gloves and a facemask, then she was a dead ringer for the camerawoman who had been at my house last night.

"Fancy seeing you here," I drawled, shaking out my shield charm. I leaned out of the aisle to keep her in my sight while I spoke over the shoulder to Mr. Bock. "You're probably going to want to take a walk. I'll keep an eye on things here while you're out."

I didn't bother waiting for him to respond as I stepped forward, into swinging range of my staff. No reason to start the fight yet, but I wanted to get a look at whatever pages she was looking at.

"Oh!" the lady exclaimed, taking in my stance and stepping back. "I'm sorry, Mr. Dresden. Can I help you?"

"I'm not too sure," I admitted, taking another step forward. "Maybe you could tell me what exactly you're looking for?"

She bit her lip, glancing down at the book in her hands. Slowly, she offered it to me, open to a poem, _Erlkönig_ , by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I would have had to drop my staff to take it, so I didn't. "This was the poem I was telling you about last night," she said carefully. "After seeing your copy of this book, I was curious about why it wasn't torn up, and I remembered that I'd seen it here, in this occult shop, a few years ago."

"A few years ago," I asked, testing each word as I said it. I raised an eyebrow. "You expect me to believe you saw it _years ago_ in this shop, and it just magically stuck in your head all that time?"

She shook her head, hair dancing around her face. "I have an eidetic memory. Perfect recall. Once I've seen something, it's always there, waiting to be called back up again."

I grunted. She didn't seem like she was gearing up for a fight. She actually looked like a bookworm minus the glasses, the way she pulled the book back and crossed her arms over it, but I wasn't going to trust my gut one way or the other about her. I'm a sucker for a pretty face, but knowing Necromancy had been done here had me on edge.

"So. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, eh? Tell me something. If you have perfect recall, then why did you need to take another look at that book? It's not like you'd have forgotten anything in it."

She pouted. "I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover when I was here last time. I just flipped it open to a few random pages to see if I wanted to read any more of it."

"Mmhmm," I grunted. "See a strange book at a crime scene, might as well investigate it."

"For your information-"

"My, my, Mr. Dresden," an oily voice slithered out from between the shelves, and a dark figure wearing a black cloak with the cowl completely lost in darkness stepped out behind me. I pivoted on the spot, turning my shield charms toward him while I pointed my staff toward the blonde. "I knew you were a thorn in my side for your ability to gather information seemingly out of nowhere, but I hadn't realized it was quite so… literal."

I glanced back and forth between the man with the Cowl and the blonde, then did a double take. In the instant I'd looked away, she had vanished.

I'd been pulling information out of nowhere, he said?

I opened my third eye, quick as can be, but the only difference between the bookshelves (some holding power in the hidden pages of their books) was that she hadn't been there in the first place.

She hadn't left any footprints in the plush carpeting.

I forced myself to put it out of my mind, and pointed my staff back toward the dark figure; if she wasn't physically there, I had to trust she couldn't stab me in the back. The man in the deep cowl hadn't taken advantage of my confusion. If anything, the bastard looked amused.

"I wonder, then, how closely related to the time shifts you've been these past several months?" he probed, and my heart stopped.

I didn't give him an answer; normally I'd quip for its own sake, but my throat had closed up as I recalled advice I'd heard at least twice over: _don't talk about time travel_.

"There's no reason to be rude, Mr. Dresden," the cowled figure murmured, clasping his gloved hands. "I've always been willing to let you come over to our side, no matter how many jokes you make about Darth Vader when I do."

"I'm not sure I'll be a good fit if I'm not even allowed to make them," I said carefully. I was drawing in power, probably enough that the man in the hood noticed, but he didn't seem to care. That wasn't good news. "If I don't get my daily recommended value of snark out, it gives me hives."

"Is that so?" Cowl, as I started thinking of him, took the idea seriously, tilting his head. "Perhaps in another life we may consider silencing you for the sake of seeing such a reaction. I've never heard of the like in my long life thus far."

"If it weren't my shtick, I might recommend you to add it to your diet. Maybe it's never an issue, but do you really want to risk something like that? Picture it: you're chanting, calling up dark forces, and BAM! Suddenly, hives. Ruins your whole day."

He nodded deeply, like I'd exposed one of the greater truths of the universe. "I appreciate both the warning and your consideration of my well-being, Mr. Dresden. Now then, with your 'daily snark' quotient filled, perhaps we could return to the subject of the time loops. I'm sure you've noticed them, nearly every magical talent in the city has."

I grunted, not willing to say more. He took it as a sign that he should continue.

"While it was entertaining and enlightening to discover that we'd been caught in them, and while we've certainly put our newfound foreknowledge to good use, it is time that these jumps through time come to a close. If you would be so kind, please inform your ally that enough is enough. We've won, and all the loop is serving to do is exhaust his or her power. It's really rather pointless, don't you think?"

"I guess I could pass it along," I spoke as easily as I could, but my mind was racing. They weren't responsible? _My ally_? If not them, then who?

I doubled down with a broad smile.

"Aw, come on, Cowl. Groundhog day is a wonderful movie! Tell your guys to get over the headaches, because we're not giving up until we get things _right!_ "

Cowl must have seen something in my face, because he sighed, then tsked three times. "You don't have any clue about the ones responsible, do you?"

 _He's going to hit you from all sides. Shielding head-on won't be enough_.

"I'm terribly sorry, but if you aren't going to join us, and you know nothing about the last obstacle we've been facing, then there's really no reason for us to continue. Good day, Mr. Dresden."

I dropped my staff and threw all my power, everything I had, everything I'd gathered, all my fear, my rage, my confusion, everything into my shield bracelet, forcing it not into the usual half-hemisphere of glowing blue power, but instead into a dome, completely covering me. I doubled over, literally taking a knee to better weather whatever storm was coming, and to minimize the total area I needed to defend.

It _still_ wasn't enough.

Cowl raised a gloved hand and yanked it to his chest. A hundred blades, hidden in the books of the far wall, burst out and bounced off my shield from behind.

Cowl grunted as I chuckled, and then he hit me with his combo.

The initial blast of force hit me from the front, like I'd been expecting, but then the shelves on either side of me slammed together, shattering them and throwing books out randomly, and _then_ spears of force slammed in from all directions, attempting to turn me into a pincushion. If it had stopped there, had I been given a moment to breathe, I would have managed, but the entire spell repeated, _SLAM_ from the front, spikes from everywhere, and now the broken pieces of the shelves hammered me down alongside the other waves of force and power. It was the third massive fist of power from Cowl's direction that finally broke through my shield, and it still had enough after that to lift me off the ground and throw me back a dozen feet, and I scrambled to raise it again when a different kind of explosion filled the air. Gunfire. Lots and lots of gunfire. Cowl quickly raised a shield of his own, but he'd been caught off guard, and I think he must have been shot at least twice. I raised my right hand, and tried triggering my force ring. No dice, I'd used it's one good shot at the morgue. If he felt the attack, he didn't act like it, not even when I did a moment's mental arithmetic and repurposed my force ring as a focus to throw a hasty blast of energy at him again. He stepped calmly backward, over the mess of books littering the ground, back toward the back room where the more rare and valuable texts were locked away. The door must have been left propped open a bit, because with a final wave of his hand it flew open and he ran through it.

It was another ten seconds before the even rat-tat-tat-tat of machine guns cut down to one, then none, and I vaguely heard calls of, "Cease fire!" I was shaking while I pushed myself to a sitting position, and I could feel my shield bracelet burning into my wrist, the little metal shields almost red-hot from the power. I whispered words of power, gently, to pull the heat away.

"Flickum bicus," I subvocalized, and sparked a tiny flame to life above my right hand. With only the heat of the shields to keep it lit, the burning sensation faded down to a mere uncomfortable heat. I dropped the spell as men in military fatigues entered the store, pointing their rifles around, periodically calling out, "Clear!"

I raised my shaking hands as best I could from the floor.

I looked at the floor where Cowl had stood, but nary a drop of blood had been left behind. I doubted I'd find any fibers to track him with, either.

A few minutes later, I was escorted out the front, the sound of gunfire and howling echoing in the distance.


	18. A Personal Grudge

While I'd attempted to walk properly after having my ass handed to me by Cowl, in reality I had to accept that I needed to be supported by a pair of men in military fatigues to stand upright. It was embarrassing, but from some of the looks I was getting from other members of the National Guard, they were shocked and awed that I'd stood in the middle of a killing floor and could still walk away only a little worse for wear. That, or maybe some of them were coming to terms with the terrorist bombing that had just happened on American soil. It wouldn't have mattered that there wasn't a physical bomb; the debris from Cowl's attack had blown out the front door and a part of the front wall, and while nobody (myself mostly excluded) had been hurt, this was real. Magic was real, and it was dangerous as hell.

Or maybe they'd all just drank a dozen cups of coffee after driving in a convoy from some military base nearby. It's not like I could read their minds.

Some of the older soldiers, though, were the opposite: eyes up and moving, hands either free or on their rifles, stances ready even when standing tall. Whether it was military experience or hard living, I wasn't sure, but I suspected this wasn't their first rodeo.

I chuckled a little to myself. Maybe Cowl and the other black hoods trying to run this shindig were biting off more than they could chew.

I swallowed my amusement.

Or maybe they'd gone up against the military in a previous timeline, and they'd won.

Was it really somebody on _our_ side, or maybe even on _my_ side, screwing with time to stop these guys? Seeing everything they had at their disposal, and trying to salvage some kind of win in an otherwise unwinnable scenario?

I hoped not. Win or lose, whoever was responsible was going to catch hell for trying, and that's ignoring what it might have been doing to their minds.

While I'd been thinking over the dangers of what we'd be up against, and whether it was some hidden ally playing with time, I'd been walked over to the back of an ambulance for the second time in two days. I did my best to ignore them as they looked me over.

A helicopter broke into my mental review of the short fight, and I had barely a thought to spare for the lady-who-wasn't-there over the sounds of the descending chopper. It landed without slowing the blades down, and four individuals climbed out. The helicopter took off back into the air as they took in the scene, and I took the opportunity to look them over.

Two of the guys I dubbed Thing 1 and Thing 2, because other than which side of the middle two guys they were standing on, they were otherwise identical in size and apparel. They were wearing heavy SWAT gear without any SWAT logos, and they were armed with short rifles that they kept pointed down while they looked around. Their faces were covered with balaclavas, their helmets were heavy, and their blackout gear stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the military guys in the area dressed mostly in jungle green and desert grey camo. I suspected that if I were dumb enough to make a sudden move into my coat while looking at any of the four guys who had come out of the helicopter, they'd shoot me without hesitation.

The other two guys not dressed in my-orders-are-to-leave-no-survivors black were clearly officers. They were the only two guys I could see wearing their military dress instead of fatigues, and I suspect they'd been grabbed that morning before they could change into something more appropriate to the battlefield Chicago had become. One had a plain face under a pair of plain black glasses and he was pretty tall, though not so tall as me, and the other was maybe 5'6", and looked angry at everything. Mr. Angry-Face looked to be in his late fifties, if the grey hair under his military hat or the lines on his forehead were any indication, but I could have been off by a few years in either direction.

The taller, somewhat younger man spotted me and pointed, muttering something to the shorter man, and the pair of them started walking my way. Thing 1 and Thing 2 may have kept their guns pointed at the ground, but they didn't stop looking at everything as they escorted their officers to greet me. I wasn't sure what their ranks might have been, but the shorter man had a bunch more ribbons on the left side of his chest and a star on each of his shoulders, so I suspected he was the one with a higher rank.

The angry man with stars on his shoulders looked pointedly at the building, especially at the massive hole in the front of it, then turned a glare back at me.

"When you told us you wanted to get to the bookstore, _before it became a big scene_ , I hadn't read into the implication that you were planning on _making it one_ ," the angry older man said, fighting to keep his voice even. "Regale me, oh wise Dresden, Chicago's Resident Wizard, with some sufficient reason for your actions that will not have you imprisoned here and now. You have thirty seconds. If you try to be funny, I will consider having you shot."

I looked up at Thing 1, who moved his finger to the trigger of his rifle, then back down at the man. I believed implicitly that he was being absolutely serious.

"I was being diplomatic."

The man closed his eyes for a moment, and I swear, he was shaking, literally _shaking_ with rage. He turned away from me to take a deep breath, and I watched him mumble a few numbers before he turned back to me like the almighty wrath of God.

"There are _no words_ for the level of shit that is about to fall on you from great height, do you understand me!? I am going to put you in a hole so deep in the ground you'll need to take a bus to China to _wipe your ass_ , which will have to wait until the excavation crews are done removing the boot I plan to plant there so hard, you'll need the best doctors in the world to identify that you were ever human in the first place! When I'm through with you, they'll have to leave you in that hole, because if they try to move you, they won't find enough pieces to bury anywhere else! _DIPLOMATIC_?! YOU CALL THIS DIPLOMATIC?! I'll show you _diplomatic_ , in every shape and form they've come up with since the word was _invented_ , you sack of shit! Do you hear me?! I said, DO YOU HEAR ME, SHIT STAIN?!"

I was caught up between the idea that he was barking like an angry bulldog and the soldiers at his sides who could probably make me disappear, and an errant thought passed through my mind that if he wasn't yelling, this guy might get along swimmingly with the Mob boss Marcone. Back in the present, I just nodded, choosing to go along with him rather than find out the hard way if he'd do away with due process and follow through with his threat.

He grit his teeth, took a deep breath, and actually calmed himself down. It was almost scary how quickly he buried the rage, and managed to work his way back down to just 'extremely angry.' He kept up the glare, then said clearly, "I'm going to go talk to somebody with a brain. You have until I get back to clean up your act, and if you don't I _will_ have you taken to prison for impeding a federal investigation, and depending on what we find, treason. Is _that_ clear?"

"Uh, yes, Sir," I offered. If I'm being honest, I was more troubled when I was up against Cowl earlier, because he was actively trying to kill me, but it was nice to know I could still piss off my allies, too.

The guy turned to walk away, and waved between the other officer and me. "Find out something useful," he told him, then walked away.

I watched the man step away, and the guy he left me with gave me a pitying look.

"What?" I asked him neutrally.

He shook his head. "General Chase was visiting his family here in Chicago when the call went out. They were only a few blocks from the Morgue when it was attacked. If not for that, and the expectation that magic may kill all our electronic forms of communication, he wouldn't be here." He cleared his throat. "Of course, that information goes nowhere, understand?"

I nodded again.

He nodded back. "It might help if you were a little more understanding when next you speak to the General, Mr. Dresden. I'm curious, though," He gave me a questioning look. "Were you trying to be funny, or were you actually trying to be diplomatic?"

"The latter," I told him, looking past him at the man I now knew was a General; he was standing over a table they must have pulled up just for him, leaning over it and pointing at various spots on what was probably a map. "I was speaking with another Necromancer, who I've nicknamed Cowl for his magically hidden face, and he was trying to probe me for information on what he was up against." And to ask me about time travel, that too. "When he decided I wasn't worth his time, he attacked me. If you guys hadn't backed me up, I don't think I'd still be here, so… thanks, I guess."

The second man rubbed his hands together, looking at the blown up store. "Why were you speaking with him in the first place?"

I sighed. My back was sore again. "I was getting ready to throw down with him when he showed up, but it was a trap. I was buying time. It didn't work, and all I know now is that we may have a mysterious benefactor that the Necromancers are up against. That, and the other side is apparently on the fence on whether to recruit me or shoot me on sight. No," I corrected dryly, "actually, they _were_ on the fence. I think they've swapped cleanly over to shooting me on sight, so there's that."

"If you say so, Mr. Dresden," the man told me, trying to look at my eyes. I pointedly looked away, and changed the subject.

"Hey, normally you military guys wear name tags, but you're sort of, well, not," I gestured to him, "so is there anything I should call you, or are you just the tall military guy?"

He shrugged lightly. "Lieutenant Tarkin."

I blinked. "Wait, _Tarkin?_ Like, Admiral Tarkin?"

He gave me a flat look over his glasses. "I wasn't a fan of those movies, to be honest."

I mentally prepared to give a twenty minute presentation on everything wrong with his previous statement when somebody yelled, and almost everyone in the area with a gun pointed it down the road at a pair of wolves and a big dog, who froze where they were. Andi and Kirby, I suspected, with Mouse.

"They're with me!" I called out before things could get any worse. "Let them through, they're with me!"

There was some confusion for a moment on whether I could give that kind of order, but plenty of the soldiers pointed their guns down and away. The General himself gave a bellowing order to "Stand down!" and the Alphas carefully made their way over to me. I sighed, and pointed back in the direction of our car, half a block away.

"Go get dressed, please," I told them, and then, to Lieutenant probably-wasn't-really-called Tarkin, "Can you send somebody with them while they get dressed? They don't shift with clothes. It's not far."

"They can stay right where they are," General Chase cut in, striding back over. "Right where we can see them, until I get an explanation. We damn near shot them when we set up our perimeter around the Bookstore, and then they got in the way of our snipers in pursuit of your man in robes." He looked between me and them. "Well?"

"They're my backup," I offered. "They were supposed to cover the front, in case something went down. Your guys did that job alright. I'm probably alive because they caught Cowl there off guard, right before he executed me."

The General gave them a hard look, then looked back up at my eyes. I pointedly looked at his forehead, and wondered for a moment if it was a military thing to look at people's eyes like that, or if they were specifically ignoring whatever warnings they might have had on looking wizards in the eyes. Eventually, he shook his head.

"Rather than wait ten minutes for us to set up a real perimeter, you had a trio of dogs on standby for a breach." He nodded with a condescending smile. "That worked out pretty good, not keeping everybody on the same page, didn't it?" What little smile was there vanished. "If you weren't the only man in the city with enough magical knowledge to tell us what the hell is going on with the spooky side of this trainwreck in motion, I'd follow through on my previous threats, and I would _bury you_. As it stands, I'm going to put a pin in that."

He took a deep, deep breath, and let it out without taking his eyes from mine.

"How about you tell me, in plain terms, what they bring to the table?"

I looked down at them, and I prepared to say something, but something stopped me. What _did_ they bring to the table that the military didn't?

"Your hesitation doesn't sit well with me, Wizard," the General said quietly.

"They're quick, they're quiet, and they're good at skirmishing where most of your soldiers are going to have to come from obvious directions," I said quickly, feeling a little insulted on the Alphas' behalf. "They're a well-maintained unit, and they have a good idea of what we're up against. They're here to watch my back from the shadows, and to ambush anything that tries to get the drop on me. I trust them," I finished grandly, not stopping to wonder if any of it didn't fit. The two Alphas present looked at me, and I hope it was with some kind of appreciation; I was busy looking at the General, not them.

General Chase looked down at them, clearly ready to disagree. For good or ill, he closed his eyes and shook his head. I suspected I was trying his patience.

"Lieutenant, see to it that the dogs get some clothes," He told his subordinate. "You, Dresden, are needed for something else."

He turned and walked away, and I caught Mouse's eyes and waved him to follow me. My dog fell in step with me, and we followed General Chase while the Alphas left with Tarkin. The area had become a hive of activity around our conversation, and larger trucks were pulling in to secure the location. I actually saw a couple of soldiers pulling sandbags out of one of the trucks, setting them in quarter circles around the entrance to the bookstore, before I nearly walked into the General. He had four soldiers waiting for him by his little table, and they stood at ease around it.

He either didn't notice or didn't care that I'd nearly stepped into him, and he gestured to one of his men, one holding a clipboard, to speak.

"We've discovered something on the second floor of the bookstore, what we believe to be a ritual site of some kind. Without some expert advice, we don't want to touch anything that might explode, like the bookstore itself did," he summarized for me.

The General narrowed his eyes at me again. "For what good it's done us, you've pulled the locations of places supposedly like this one out of your ass. Now, you're the only man we have here in Chicago who can identify what exactly we're dealing with. Are you going to help us, or should we read you your rights?"

"I think I'll skip to the part where I help you," I answered. "It'll probably save everyone a little time."

"Take these two with you," the General pointed to the guy with the clipboard and another of the soldiers, presumably somebody who would keep an eye on me. "And don't think I haven't noticed the dog. If he wasn't on your file, like so much other shit you've pulled over the years, I'd tell you to leave him here, but you'd probably just claim he can smell magic. Maybe he does. I don't care. Get moving."

He turned away from me, and started talking to one of the others on some other matter.

While I often insist that holding back what we've learned so we can dangle it around like bait to our enemies and allies is like Wizard crack, I wasn't keen to upset the military any more than I already had. I swallowed any further responses, nodded to the two men, and resolved to just tell them what I found when I was done. I whistled for Mouse as I headed back into the Bookstore, feeling morbidly eager to see why Cowl had been standing guard over it.

As per General Angry-Face's orders, the pair of babysitters in military uniforms fell in line with Mouse and I, and the one not holding a clipboard stepped in front as we came to the exploded doorway. The bookstore itself looked about as destroyed as I expected it to, now that I could look at things from an outside perspective; the bookshelves were mulched, and the books themselves had been shredded by an absurd amount considering how short the fight actually was. The back room, where the more valuable books would normally be locked away, wasn't nearly as destroyed, but the expensive books themselves had been cleaned out. Not a single paperback had been left behind. What significance that had, if any, was beyond me at that moment.

There was a door out the back, where I assumed Cowl had fled, and another hidden half behind a bookshelf. We took the latter into a stairwell, with one guard leading, followed by me and then Mouse, and the final guard taking up the rear. The first guard knocked on the door at the top, and somebody on the other side let us all in.

Given the state of the war zone downstairs, I was surprised at how untouched things were in the little apartment we'd entered into. There were piles of white powder everywhere, either some kind of dust or drugs, and the kitchenette had been almost physically ripped out of the way to make room for a raised iron circle nearly six feet in diameter and half an inch tall. The edges of all the hard iron lines were etched with sigils and colored red with what I suspected was blood.

I looked up, and blinked. While dwellings that have magical beings in them don't have televisions as a rule, this one had a couch placed as though there should have been one. In its place, however, was a large dart board. In the center of that was a picture of a certain wizard detective with a knife in the eye. I almost hadn't been certain of who the picture was of, at first. The number of knife-sized holes in it almost impossible to make out.

Mouse whined, his tail deep down between his legs. I absentmindedly reached down to pet him, and tried to ignore the feeling that the air was simultaneously too clean and choked with something cold and empty.

The soldiers hadn't touched anything. I guess the military had sufficient training on not messing with crime scenes. That, or unknown things that might explode.

In that scenario, that would make me the bomb squad.

"Alright, guys," I told the four military men (two had been guarding this area), "I'm not going to ask you to leave, but I'm going to walk around to see what I can see. Please don't stand in front of me. I'm going to use my Sight on some of this, a kind of Magical vision, and I need to get as clear a picture as possible."

Mouse and the others waited by the door for me to get started, but one of them spoke up.

"Mr. Dresden, Sir?" the guard who had been trailing us spoke up. "If you can, please state your findings aloud so we can record them."

I looked back to find that the man with the clipboard had taken out a pen and readied himself to take notes. I sighed.

"Alright, let me be straight with you," I told him. "Normally, I look over the entire scene and then tell the investigators afterward what I've found, because then they turn it into something usable for their higher ups that doesn't roughly translate to 'magical shennanigans happened and we're up against a Wendigo,' or something like that. My mental processes during the investigation sometimes go sideways while I'm trying to discover the truth, so… I may sort of gibber."

He shrugged. "I can always rewrite a formal report based on you gibbering if I have to. It's going to help us if we can follow the process, Sir. Gibber all you like."

I shook my head and turned back to the scene.

"Do you know what a Wizard's magical Sight is, soldier?" I asked him.

"We have a description on file, but if it's related to what you're about to do, it wouldn't hurt the record to write down now."

"Alright. A Wizard's Sight allows them to see what I'll loosely call the 'Truth' of the world. We can see through illusions, glamours, some kinds of lies, magic, and we can get a picture of the intent or background of a location or thing, as well as an overview of a person's true face and form if we happen to look at somebody while our Sight is open. The downside is, no matter what I see, it's going to be fresh in my mind _forever._ You with me so far?"

He was frantically writing down everything I was saying, but he nodded, not looking up.

"Great. So, I'm going to see about opening up my Wizard's Sight on some of this stuff after I get my first look around, but I'd rather not see any of you, and it's also possible I'm going to become physically ill because of something grinding against my senses. Just let me know when I can get started. I'd like to get this over with as quick as possible if I can. This place is giving me the creeps."

It was a little annoying to have to wait before I could get started on a scene, but I'd been called to other scenes with reporters or other less open-minded authority figures in the past, so I could be patient. Half a minute later, the soldier gave me the go-ahead, and asked me to be as clinical as I could manage.

"Alright. So, I've just entered the suspected Necromancy working area, and my first thought is, 'Damn, this place is really clean considering we had a fight downstairs.' There are piles of white powder all over the place, but they're almost ordered, like they're in neat piles as opposed to all over the place. The kitchen has been ripped out to make room for an iron circle, estimated six feet in diameter, raised maybe half an inch off the ground, and covered in sigils. The sigils appear to be both etched in and worked over with a red coloring, best guess says it's blood. Given that we're up against Necromancers, I suspect human blood.

"As a side note, there's a dart board with my face on it, well-used. I suspect whoever put it there doesn't particularly like me."

I sighed, then waited for the guard to finish marking down what I'd said. This was a pain in my ass, but if I wanted military support, I had to grin and bear it.

The next rooms were less interesting, and I kept up my monologue as I walked through, confirming more piles of dust in different locations. I trailed off, looking around the bedroom, then tilted my head.

The guard cleared his throat. "Please continue out loud, Sir."

I grimaced. "Yeah, sorry. I'm just trying to see if the piles of dust are positioned in a way that gives them significance. Pentagrams, pentacles, other religious symbols. No clue yet on whether the dust placement is significant, or if they were dropping it around wherever it fell. Until I go back over things with my Sight, I can't be certain. ...Hey, remember how I said this place is giving me the creeps? I want you to note that down. This place is foul somehow, I just haven't discovered why yet."

The guard didn't answer, but with how quickly his pen was scratching away, I suspected he'd gotten it.

I was about to leave the room when something caught my eye. On the other side of the bed, laying in one of the piles of whatever-it-was, was a pair of glasses. I noted it out loud, including that the frames were purple and had some kind of glitter on them, then stepped back away.

The piles of white powdered substance were everywhere. They were in the bedroom, in the bathroom, everywhere except…

"Alright, I just noticed that what's left of the kitchen here is almost free of dust," I continued my dialogue as we made our way back to the entrance. "It's not just that there are no piles here, it's that the whole area is squeaky clean. It's a normal practice to keep a circle clear to maintain its integrity, but the entire kitchen isn't just clear of those piles, it's practically spotless." I swallowed. "It's also obviously the source of Necromancy in this house. Whatever happened, I'd be very surprised if it didn't happen right here."

I mentally prepared myself, closing my eyes.

"Alright, guys. It's time. I'm preparing to open my Wizard's Sight. Please don't interrupt."

Over the course of the past two days, I'd opened my Sight more often than I normally do in a year. I've waxed lyrical about the whys before, but it had been some time since I'd Seen something I'd desperately wished I could forget.

As I focused the energies of my mind and opened my Third Eye, I was almost physically pushed back by the force of my revulsion.

The change was huge and immediate, and the very air around me was choked with blood, dust and death. I gagged, dry heaved, and could not look away from the circle. The iron itself had been drawn from the blood of a thousand men, who had been thrown into the fires of a great forge, stirred in and mixed with half a thousand pounds of once-cooled lava from a village where a supposedly dormant volcano had killed hundreds more. Many of the men had been alive when they'd been thrown in, and of them, many had either entered the fires willingly or had been mind-raped into diving in. From that bloody, violent mess had this iron been filtered out and forged into the circle that lay before me.

The sigils, the dozens or hundreds of sigils, had been painstakingly carved with the bones of even more sacrifices, and the blood of their marrow had stained the symbols of death and life in dead languages the world around. Rebirth. They spoke of rebirth, out of the corpses of thousands and thousands of sacrifices to a single, common goal.

What that goal is or was didn't seem to matter. Only that it had cost far, far too much already.

I managed to turn my head, to tear my gaze away, away from the kitchen and into the living room.

It wasn't worse, but it sure as hell wasn't better, either.

The piles of dust had turned into figures, into people, most trying to defend themselves, hands or tentacles or paws or anything else held up against some dangerous force, the figures themselves trying to flee or fight, their faces locked in the rictus of those final moments of fear, pain, anger, confusion, and in several chilling cases, their eyes were drawn painfully, in terror, to the circle I'd just turned away from, like they knew they were sacrifices to it, and like the many piles of Monster dust that surrounded them, left out to show them their own fate, they were next to face it's gaping maw.

I Saw more, looking at those piles of dust. I Saw how much power, even now, that they contained. Within those unused piles remained bits and pieces of something like ghosts, and Undyne's words came back to me:

"Monsters' bodies aren't really made of flesh, they're made of magic mixed with dust surrounding a SOUL."

Something had used the circles to consume their _Souls_.

Mouse's whine turned into a howl as I fought to close my Sight, and finally, I managed it.

My eyes were closed, but the images I'd seen were still there, still clear and crisp, like they would be for all eternity.

I heard the soldiers saying something and trying to get me to move, but I was too far lost to what I'd Seen. I was shaking, and Mouse had lain down next to me and was licking my face. I'd opened my eyes at some point, but I couldn't really see.

I was drawn back, over and over, into the depths of that iron circle.

It had been hard to see, at first, through all the pain and death, but gradually, as I dimly recognized a medic had come in to shine a light in my eyes, I forced myself to look past the circle to what had stood within it during the recent ritual.

It had been a man, once.

Bathed in the blood and dust of however many sacrifices they'd somehow brought to this place, he'd stood inside and swallowed all that came to him.

I finally knew what the Necromancers were planning tomorrow night, at midnight on Halloween. This was, at the very least, a proof of concept, but it was probably also them… it felt dirty to lessen the loss of life, but the phrase "priming the pump" seemed most accurate. The only thing was, the location didn't make much sense.

I felt myself being moved.

Where, then? Where was the actual ritual most likely to take place?

The Museum, or the University.

The Museum had the symbolic deaths of however many civilizations buried away within it's artifacts, and was one of the remaining black marks on my map. That said, it was practically over the water, and it wasn't nearly as central a location as the University was.

The University had some other magical significance that I suspected I'd have known more about if I could either ask Bob or could manage to piece it together for myself, but I was trying to put together the picture from a puzzle I'd only gotten half the pieces for, none of them edges or corners.

Why was that circle-

I felt the image force its way to the forefront of my mind again, and I leaned over the side of the stretcher I was on and puked.

While it didn't fix things, that purging managed to temporarily clear the massive headache I'd built up in that room, and the stomach acid from my breakfast's sausages made me cough and inhale as much clean air as I could. Somebody helped me sit up straight as the world came back into focus.

A medic was trying to look me over, but the short General stepped forward and did his best to look me in the eyes. I forced myself to look down at the many ribbons on his shirt while he looked me over.

"What did you see in there?" he asked curtly.

"You're not going to like it," I told him, then burped stomach acid. The doctor handed me a glass of water, and I swished it around in my mouth and spat it out onto the street, then drank the rest.

"Tell me anyway."

I told him. Every merciless detail.

He didn't like it.

He stepped back, looking up at the room with the circle from the outside, where I realized we were, next to the ambulance again. His fists clenched, and his face turned red.

"Where does that leave us, Dresden?" He asked through clenched teeth.

"It tells us that once we wash this place out with bleach and melt down that damned circle for scrap with a clergy of priests exorcising it, it won't have any value for the enemy anymore," I told him. "I suspect the Monsters will want… will want their dead back."

At that, he nodded. He turned back to me, looking in my eyes again, and I looked away.

"While I don't normally take military guidance from civilians, you've just told us how to destroy a location critical to the enemy without burning the building down or blowing it up. That means we can move our forces somewhere useful. I'll take that over stumbling in the dark any day of the week. While you're still going to answer for everything you're involved in when this is over... do you have any ideas on our next step from your grand plan so I can turn it into marching orders in the meantime?" He asked.

I took a shuddering breath.

"One black mark on the map down," I told him. "Several to go. I think the University is going to be where things actually go down tomorrow night, but it might help drain their resources to wipe out whatever is lurking elsewhere first." I evened my breathing and gave him something that could charitably be called a smile. "Have you ever taken the time to visit Chicago's Field Museum? I hear it's nice this time of year."

He grunted, looking back up at the bookstore's second floor.

"Are you good to walk?" The military man asked me, rather than the doctor.

I pushed myself to my feet, stepping around the puddle of puke. "I'll manage."

"Good." He nodded at Things 1 and 2, who were hovering nearby. They moved to flank him. "I'll be moving to our field base, trying to organize this mess. Take the Lieutenant with you. Dismissed."

The General started shouting at the soldiers to pack up everything and probably started delegating taking that ring back to Mt. Doom, so I started looking for Andi and Kirby. Even if Lieutenant Tarkin was backing us up with a hundred soldiers, I still wanted them briefed and ready.

We left for the Field Museum shortly after.


	19. Getting to Know People

I really wanted to itch at my eye.

The cut hadn't opened back up when Cowl had thrown me across the room, it had only seeped a little bit; the medic had cleaned it up, and I didn't think it worth mentioning. Seeing my breakfast come back up a second time had also done little more than pull at it, but it hadn't done much leaking. Just a tiny bit. Just enough not to notice at the time, and just enough that now it was dry again and i could feel it when I blinked.

I tried to focus on the road, on the few cars that were still driving around and the hurried pedestrians, only a few of which even slowed down as we passed. I'd officially called shotgun because I might be able to see threats of a magical nature from the front of the covered military truck I was in, but mostly it was because I didn't want to ride in the back where I wouldn't be able to see anything. The lieutenant (who really should have gone into the Navy to become Admiral Tarkin, his dislike of Star Wars be damned) was in the vehicle behind mine, and a military Hummer led our group. Andi, Kirby and Mouse were sitting in the somewhat open seats furthest back in my own truck, and they were going to jump out as soon as the Museum came into view. Hopefully, if there was an ambush they'd be able to warn us off.

I blinked.

No, the view of the city, half deserted as it was, was pointless. I wanted to think about that woman I'd somehow forgotten again. Why was I having trouble focusing on that?

I closed my eyes and envisioned the scene, where my Sight had burned those moments permanently into my memory: no footprints in the carpet, no book that she'd been holding, and no signs of magical residue but those I'd originally missed on the back shelves, where the knives had been hidden both in books and beneath a subtle veil.

I'd instinctively closed my sight before turning it back on Cowl. I regretted that now, but I was trying to focus on something else at the time. Namely, how screwed I was, and where the hell was my doggy back up?

I used the image burned into my memories as a baseline, and mentally walked myself through the entire thing again.

Enter store. Greet Bock, who hadn't... reacted at all to Cowl planting weapons all over his store?

Great. Five seconds in, and I already have more questions.

I wanted to itch my eye, but I clenched my fists and put the feeling aside.

So Bock was either in on it, or his mind was messed with. Neither option was good, and that went double with what was going on upstairs. If I saw him again, I'd take him down quick and clean, before things could get out of hand. Move on, what happened next?

Then, I saw her. She was blonde, bookish…

I took a deep breath, fighting to recall more details. That was a very, very bad sign. I'd seen her twice, I should have been able to pull up _something_.

The book she'd been holding, she'd-

She'd handed me a copy of it back in my apartment. It was the only thing that had looked nearly untouched in my entire place, with everything else either tossed around or destroyed. I had taken it, and somehow fit it in the pocket of my duster.

I didn't look down. I just reached for my pocket, and felt around.

Something large and square was still in my pocket, long since forgotten since I'd been handed it.

The vehicles didn't slow, and as far as anyone else knew, nothing had changed. But to me? The entire world felt distant and cold.

For a moment, I had this irrational thought that it might have been a bomb, and I was about to explode. It passed, if only because such a thing would have been based on technology and would have exploded during my fight against Cowl, but the lingering feeling that I was holding something dangerous and potentially deadly on my person didn't quite go away.

Had she been there from after the original attack, then snuck out past the police after giving me the book? Or was she another illusion, one powerful enough to convince me that I could smell her, take things from her?

I took a quick breath, and pulled the thing out of my pocket.

It was my box of depleted uranium, still sealed and locked.

I quickly shoved it back in my pocket, looking over at my driver.

He looked back at me with one eyebrow raised, then shook his head and focused back on the road.

I swallowed and pointedly looked out the window.

Still, that was not a good sign.

I searched my person a little more, but the book, if I'd ever had it, was gone.

Back to the idea that she hadn't been in those places in the first place, then. Or there was something else going on, and I didn't know enough to have a real answer just yet.

I walked myself through it all again: Enter, Bock says hi, I walk the shelves, there she is, reading Die Lied der Erlking. I can _read the page she's on_. Cowl comes up behind me, accuses me of pulling facts out of nowhere. I use my Sight, and there was never anything there (besides hidden knives). Cowl and I banter, he tells me to knock off the time travel or tell my "ally" to shut it down, then decides I've got no clue what's going on. He attacks, I shield, I go tail over teakettle backwards, lots of gunfire, and the National Guard steps in to say hi.

...something's missing.

I bring up just a touch of my willpower (careful to keep it in, so I won't burn out the truck's headlights or something), and I go over it again.

Enter, Bock, walk the aisles, lady with book, Cowl tells me I'm nuts, we banter, Necromancers know about time travel, he's going to hit you from all sides, shield, gunfire-

A woman's voice.

 _He's going to hit you from all sides. Shielding head-on won't be enough_.

Oh… shit.

My memory would never, ever fade, and it told me that she had never been standing there in the first place.

Something was in my head. Something was messing with _my thoughts_.

"We're here," the driver told me. "Do you see anything?"

I blinked, startled out of my realization, and then the left side of the truck seemed to jump six feet in the air, bouncing off something in the road. I grabbed onto the dashboard weakly with my left hand and grasped at anything on the car door with my right, but couldn't get a good hold. Just as suddenly, the truck bounced back down and then my side jumped up, and I did my best to compensate by sitting up and throwing myself in the other direction.

I must have overdone it, because I slammed my head about as hard as I could into the passenger side window.

Massive head trauma is a wonderful thing. For the first moment, you feel the pain all at once, but then it's just… gone. Or if it isn't gone, you're too busy looking at all the fine details of the world directly in front of your eyes, everything a couple shades of light too bright, while you attempt to understand what the fuck, precisely, just happened. In my case, I got a remarkably detailed view of the bottom corner of the truck cab where the door hinge meets the floor just under the dashboard, and I marveled at the intricate details of the grips set into the mat beneath my feet.

It didn't quite pass while the driver said something unimportant to me, and I didn't bother looking up as the car came to a stop. It wasn't that I wasn't capable, I just didn't care to. Didn't really want to move, right that moment, either.

Still, I had a job to do, so I might as well get to it.

I blinked, shaking myself out of it as best I could.

Years of potentially deadly situations over the course of my tenure as a detective forced me to set my personal issues aside and focus on the task at hand. I scanned the empty street in front of the blocks-wide building as we drove up to the front entrance. Nothing of note there, yet. Other than the lack of people, I didn't see anything wrong without opening my Sight, and I was going to hold off for the moment.

"Not yet. But my sources tell me if they aren't here now, they sure as hell were recently," I said back. I paused. What did he say? Nevermind, not important.

I heard a screech of metal as the other vehicles pulled to a stop, their brakes needing to be looked at, and I could feel the truck move as soldiers piled out of the back, quickly taking up positions pretty much everywhere, including behind the truck. I got out myself, and a wash of energy like a manifestation of gloom hit me as I stumbled to the pavement, missing the step because I'd reached back for my staff and been disoriented.

 _Thum. Thum. Thum._

Something was playing a heavy beat with a thick base, somewhere in the distance, grating against my head, tasting of ash and death, just like it had at the Morgue. It seemed like we had company after all.

"They're here!" I shouted, pointing my staff around. "The bastards from the Morgue are _here_!"

I grasped blindly at the amulet at my chest, my mother's silver heirloom, and poured some of my energy into it. The gloom didn't go away, and that frustrated the Hell out of me. I focused, pouring more energy into my not-spell. I could have sworn, just for a moment, that I caught a whiff of really rotten eggs, like brimstone, but it was gone before I could really be sure. The feelings sort of passed beneath notice, though.

The two dozen or so soldiers with us had already been creating a perimeter, but they double timed it taking cover by the double staircase leading up into the Field Museum. There were a number of glass doors serving as entrances, with one massive glass window above a huge set of double doors serving as the main entrance, but the breaching party took it slow and careful, moving up to the four marble columns at the top of the stairs a few at a time. I readied myself to join them, until Tarkin's voice came up beside me.

"Our other forces in the area should have met us by now," he muttered, then turned to me to confirm his suspicions. "How are you so sure the enemy is here?"

"The beat in the air," I told him. "I disrupted it at the end of my last run in with this guy, and he freaked out."

Lt. Tarkin grimaced, then nodded, then stepped back and spoke into a radio, passing the information along to whoever was on the other side of the line.

"Get going, carefully," He told me. "I'll be along in a moment."

Mouse found his way to my side, and I looked down at him. "Where are the others?" I asked my dog, meaning the Alphas.

He gave me a look, then pointed his nose up toward the entrance. I hoped he meant they were waiting to breach, not already inside.

Tarkin chuckled a little strangely, like he couldn't believe what had just occurred, looking at Mouse. "Wizards," he huffed, shaking his head.

I ignored him and shook out my shield charm. I held off on raising my shield just yet, and had a moment to worry about all the automatic guns that were about to enter a place that might be full to the brim with magic.

Instead of keeping it to myself, I figured it might help if my allies knew that.

"If you go inside, be ready for your guns to jam!" I shouted carefully, trying to get my voice to raise enough to be heard outside, but not inside. "Automatics are worse than semi-autos, and simple revolvers are best! The older your munitions, the better they'll hold up!"

"Could have told us that before we came out here with the wrong fucking gear," somebody called back, lowering his tone, but one of the other guys told him to shut it.

I held my staff at the ready and came up on the massive column nearest to the doorway. There was a guy in the lead with a riot shield, and a girl at his back, hand on his shoulder, ready to move. They looked to their partners on the opposite side, then to me. A little surprised, but not put off, I nodded, then muttered to the woman in charge, "I don't look like it, but my shield is stronger than his. If I'm caught out and my arm is up, I'm fine. Other than that… let's go."

She nodded to me, then gave some signals to the guys on the other side. After a moment, she held up three fingers, then two, then one.

We moved.

Riot shields in front, rifles behind, the two sides hurried to the main door and shoved it open, and we poured into the museum, looking out for trouble.

The entrance to the museum let out into a massive open area, the ceiling at least two and a half stories up, and I felt uneasy at the obvious ambush possibilities that the also-open second floor walkways and banisters to our left and right presented as we moved. We bypassed the huge red velvet path to ticket sales and admissions in the middle of the gigantic hallway, each group bypassing it on one side or another.

The details of the rest of the room didn't seem important, because at the other end of the hall, a couple of football fields away, was Dinosaur Sue, the most intact skeleton of a T-rex in the United States, maybe in the whole world. There was some kind of scaffolding around and under her head for some reason (she normally just stands hunched over with a metal base, not needing anything to hold her from above), with four cables holding it suspended to the ceiling. Standing on that scaffolding just beneath the dinosaur head were a couple of familiar figures: Dr. Death, still wearing her medical overcoat with a new bit of blood splashed over her front, was talking up at the taller man responsible for turning the Morgue into a violent little carnival. Standing behind her was her Ghoul, holding a camo-sleeved arm. Just the arm. It was out in full eel-elongated-teeth mode, and it was chewing on the arm in question.

It stood out in contrast to the little snare drum strapped to the Ghoul's side. That, on the other hand, went nicely with the larger drum made out of bone, skin and several of what I strongly suspected were tendons that the scar-faced man was holding. He was hitting it rhythmically, steadily, and the air seemed to pulse with every beat.

The doctor, the Corpsetaker, was shouting, "This location has been suitably prepared, and it's _my_ turn to twist the knife. Go prepare another location, Grevane, before-"

The other man, Grevane apparently, had turned to put us in his sights. He raised a hand to cut her off, smiling down at me. "You want this fight, luv?" He asked, backing away to the edge of the scaffolding, a smile tugging at the edge of his face. "It's all yours. Here, your reinforcements."

The soldiers opened fire, but the Corpsetaker just sneered and held up her hand. The bullets did precisely nothing against whatever defense she'd raised while Grevane held out the ritual drum to her, and she took it in her other hand. The Ghoul dropped his meal and pulled out a pair of drumsticks (wooden, not chicken), but the Corpsetaker shoved the new drum into it's hands instead. It took up the beat with bloodied, clawed hands as Grevane dropped down the ten or twenty feet to the ground, laughing, then glanced back just once as he ran away.

"Aren't you even curious as to why we're here?" The Corpsetaker taunted, but both groups of soldiers, as well as whatever backup we had, just took defensive positions while I drew in my will. They kept up the suppressing fire, keeping her honest and making her keep up her shield. She shrugged, apparently unconcerned. "I suppose it's not important. I will say, Dresden, that I _am_ impressed with your magical strength. The old hunter doesn't seem to want to awaken, all our extra efforts be damned."

She looked at the Ghoul with a carefree smile, and the tempo it was beating into the drum doubled in speed, the air seeming to haze as my own heartbeat tried to speed up to match it.

I glanced up, just for a moment, then did a double take.

There were dozens of soldiers wearing the same uniforms as the men and women I'd come in with pouring out over the second floor banisters, stepping off into free fall over our forces. The most notable difference was definitely _not_ that far fewer of them were carrying any sort of firearm. It was that a number of them were missing limbs or chunks of torso, and that despite their continued movements, they were obviously dead.

"Above us!" I shouted, turning my energies and staff to the group on the far side of the hall, and with a snarl of rage I called on the wind.

"Ventas Maximus!" I shouted, and that same whisper of nasty egg-fart blew past my nose as the zombie soldiers jumped over the railings on the second floor. My wind caught almost all of them, overpowering gravity just enough to lift some back up and slam the rest into the walls. The soldiers over there caught on pretty quickly, turning their attentions on the new enemies.

In contrast, I had a zombie land almost directly on my back, slamming me into the floor.

I struggled to both turn myself over and to lift my shoulders to cover my neck with my spell-laced duster, but the damned thing was clawing and biting at the top of my head instead. I tried to do something about it, but a hand came around to grab my face and I felt the stiches in my eye get torn away, and I screeched as my vision was lost in blood again. Someone managed to yank the bastard off me, and I flipped over onto my back, staff raised, to catch half a glimpse of the woman from earlier twisting the undead's head between her legs, her hands on the ground, as she turned and flipped it sideways. Something cracked amidst the gunfire, and the next thing I knew she was dragging me to the side, out of the melee.

I got my bearings while she grabbed a pistol off her leg and started shooting at something. The adrenaline made the pain in my face unimportant, and with a careful wipe at my face, I could just barely see the fight out of the eye that hadn't been torn up again.

A second, staccato beat joined the first, and I glanced up at the Corpsetaker to see that she'd taken up the snare drum, a vicious smile on her lips. She shouted out a phrase in what I would later learn was Creole, and a green haze of fog seemed to raise up around her, indistinct figures holding swords forming in it. A touch of that hungry emptiness I'd felt when she ate my magic wafted out from the ground as agonized screams filled the air.

I grimaced, holding my ears as best I could with one hand weak and the other holding my staff, and a number of the soldiers dropped to the ground, defenseless, while the zombie army quickly took advantage and slaughtered them. The air shuddered, and the glass of every display case shattered.

Mouse, my faithful companion who I'd lost track of in the fight, wasn't having any of it.

A roaring bark, louder than a school's emergency alarm system, tore back into the shuddering of the air, and I could damn near _feel_ it competing with the Necromantic energies and spellwork. The Corpsetaker shouted something else, the words oily and slithering against my ears, and I realized her focus was totally on my dog.

I raised my staff, pointing it at her, and my internal temperature rose. I breathed in, focusing my will and frustration at the loss of my blasting rod, and-

My breathing hitched. I snarled and threw _that_ frustration into my spell as well.

Fire. I called upon the cleansing, unstoppable wildfire, burning itself into my very soul.

"Fuego! PYRO FUEGO!" I screamed, and the runes on my staff lit up red and angry, the scent of brimstone filling the air as the hottest flame I'd ever called on blasted out in a line, thicker than a telephone pole and almost as bright as burning magnesium, toward the Corpsetaker.

Her eyes widened for a moment as she dropped her drum and held out both hands, palms up as she crouched. Somehow, _somehow_ , she managed to twist the flames and direct them up at damn near a 90 degree angle toward the ceiling.

I shuddered, the sensation of my left hand melting all over again coming unbidden to my mind, and I shivered more as the Corpsetaker's nasty smile seemed to look past me into my soul. She leaned down, eyes only for me, to pick up the drum again as her Ghoulish friend smiled a shark's smile.

Right up until Dinosaur Sue's massive skull fell off of her skeleton onto the scaffolding, crushing the both of them.

The redirected fire had cut straight up into it, and apparently wasn't all that good for the bindings.

The beat in the air cut out, and the zombies all dropped what they were doing for a moment. The green haze, whatever it was supposed to be, gradually faded away as what troops were left alive got the upper hand against the now-uncoordinated attack by the zombie army; without the beat guiding them, maybe half had just stopped and stood around, while the remainder either attacked each other or fought much less viciously against our own forces.

I idly wondered where the hell the Alphas had gone.

I could have helped clean up the last of the zombies, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

I was staring, unfeeling except for the burning, down into the glove of my left hand. It throbbed, the sensation curling my weak fingers, and I could smell the brimstone scent on the air. Mouse must have finished cleaning up the straggler zombies, because he came to sit in my lap. I don't remember falling to the floor with my back against one of the walls, but I must have. How else could Mouse have come to sit in my lap?

Everything felt sort of hazy.

I was blinking, just, so. Much.

My headache was

 _ **Die alone**_

Cowl stabbed me

Somebody was telling me to stay awake.

The graves were musty, my own empty grave

Drum beats, the screeching of birds

Mouse licked my face, whining.

I closed my eyes.

* * *

A.N.

There's a 360 view of the Field Museum interior online. It was EXTREMELY helpful, but indicated that there's no way for a cool scene later to occur. I'm going to flat-out ignore those inconsistencies, because this is a story and I like cool stuff.


	20. Friends in Unexpected Places

" _Wakey wakey,_ Boss man," a voice echoed painfully through my head. "It's time we had a chat. You're late for this, in fact."

I blinked heavily, trying to gauge where I was, and all I saw was an expansive black void. I looked blearily in the general direction of the voice, _my_ voice, and I saw a figure there, one that quickly crystallized into a familiar shape.

Standing as tall as a basketball player, he was wearing a black leather coat. He had a gloved left hand; my own twitched. He smirked with his rugged-but-not-actually-handsome face, and stroked his little black goatee. Every time I saw it, it made me picture an old-timey cartoon villain tying a screaming woman to a set of train tracks, laughing maniacally all the while. He didn't seem to need a focus like my Staff or broken blasting rod, no, because he was suave and subtle, what might have been, the less savory roads untraveled.

Me. It looked like who I could have been if I'd fallen to the power of the Dark Side. Given that this was supposed to represent my subconscious, it was sobering whenever I found myself down here. I'd talked to myself in the past, in a very literal way, and no matter how dumb I could be, I always came away from these little talks having learned something. Usually I understood the message I was trying to give myself subconsciously only after I suffered the consequences of missing the memo. By then, people had usually died.

Part of me really, really wanted to feel exhausted, but as this was apparently the inside of my mind, I didn't feel much of anything.

Except frustrated annoyance. I had that in spades.

"What happened now?" My voice was not whiney.

" _You_ ," Darth Me answered jovially. " _You_ happened. More than once, actually. Get up, I'll introduce you."

My inner evil waved his jazz-hands dramatically to the side, and _another_ version of me walked up.

This one was considerably less of an evil-goatee bad guy, but for all the wrong reasons. He looked bent, almost hunched over his staff, and while I could see the ghost of a smile on his face, it was rough enough to call a grimace, or a sneer, or maybe a smug caricature of something sly. I couldn't quite tell because he had a distracting open wound. The injury started near the bone of his chin under his right ear, where it flayed his cheek clean off and continued past what was left of his nose, and finally cleaved a chunk of his hair away above his left eye.

Whatever had done that hadn't been gentle to his right eye, which was dangling out of its shattered socket.

At my gobsmacked stare, the smile turned huge and genuine, which was fucking creepy to see on my own face, _half cleaved off_.

"Good to see you too, Past Me," the figure chuckled. "Ignore the scars, that's what you'll tell the next guy if you find yourself in my position."

"What-" I shook myself. "What _happened_?"

Other-me-without-the-goatee, or maybe Future Me, shook his head, the eye dangling down freely. I stared at it. "Short answer? Quintus Cassius of the Denarians. The Snakeboy. You'd call him Liver Spots about now, and you'd realize he was coming back for revenge when he'd already captured you, coming after Lasciel's coin. Or, one of us did, way back when in the future, and we've passed it along ever since. If I don't miss my guess, Snakeboy's coming up next in your timeline, Past Me."

Quintus Cassius, The Snakeboy, or Liver Spots as I was calling him, had been a major threat before I'd more or less neutralized him two years ago. He had given up the coin of a Fallen Angel, which ordinarily meant he'd be free to walk away from his crimes without being punished by the Knights of the Cross, three holy warriors wielding Swords forged from the nails that Jesus bore. Supposedly, giving up the coin meant you were being remorseful, and seeking a better path, but more often than not the bad guys just used it as an excuse to get away and try again later. I'd been around at the time Snakeboy had told us he point blank he was getting off scot free, and I'd had a baseball bat... and after the holy guys left the room I'd ensured he wouldn't bother us any more.

I guess that's why it had looked like he had arthritis in all his joints. Apparently he'd taken it personally.

Snakeboy had gotten most of his power, and his immortality, from one of the thirty pieces of silver Judas had been paid to betray one third of the Holy Trinity. Those coins, those thirty little Roman denarii, each held the presence of a Fallen Angel. If you touched one, you could be corrupted. Depending on who told the story, it was only a matter of time from that first touch until you were warped beyond all recognition. The wielders of the Swords three had been standing against the corruption those Fallen spread, and they leveled the playing field whenever those Swords were drawn… but for all their physical prowess, magical ability and sheer Angel strength, the real dangers behind the coins could be found in their more subtle plays.

Their leader, Nicodemus, rarely if ever fought, but he played the long game. Last year, just after I'd helped prevent him from unleashing the next Bubonic Plague, he'd thrown an unbonded coin into my friend's backyard, and then he'd walked away. I'd slapped my hand on a silver denarius to prevent an infant child, the most recently born son of Michael Carpenter (one of those three Knights of the Cross), from growing up alongside the whispers of one of the Fallen. The unburned circle of flesh in the palm of my left hand, branded with the symbol of an hourglass, was a constant reminder that I really, really should have just picked up the baby instead.

I'd buried the coin in a circle in my basement, enchanted it as best I could, and did my best to forget about the whole thing.

"That can wait just a minute, as important as it is," my possibly-evil Subconscious cut in around Future Me's explanation. "We've got bigger issues to deal with first."

"Bigger than me getting carved up by a Denarian?! For Lasciel's coin?! _What?!_ " I shouted, pushing forward in my mindscape, hysterical. "If I'm playing with future knowledge, breaking the Sixth Law, maybe I should figure out what kind of shit happened that _made that seem like a reasonable idea_ , huh?!"

"No," Future Me cut in, scratching the back of his head, seemingly unconcerned that he'd dropped several knowledge bombs on me. "Actually, Dark Inner Me is right. We should probably deal with her first."

" _Who_?!" I shouted, now thoroughly angry and confused, but Subconscious Me just pointed behind Actual- behind me.

Like I'd said, a very young child had nearly touched the coin of a Fallen Angel. I'd made a grab for it instead, and I had touched it with my bare flesh. I'd Seen what happened to one of the suckers who'd taken up a coin, Seen his soul chained and bloody around a pillar of madness in his own mind while a Fallen piloted his body around like a rental car with insurance. I'd tried to forget about touching the coin, but it kept me up nights wondering what it would eventually cost me.

The bill had come due.

Like one of those loons in a horror film, I turned around slow.

Lasciel, the Temptress, was wearing a nice blue-and-white cotton dress, like the one you'd expect on Alice down the rabbit hole. She didn't look like the inevitable corruption of my soul, but I suppose if it was obvious, she wouldn't be half as dangerous. She smiled her perfect, beautiful smile at me, and gave me a little friendly wave. Even from here, I could smell that faint essence of strawberries in her blonde hair. She must have noticed, because she blushed and winked at me.

My Subconscious slapped me upside the back of the head.

"Ogle the pretty Angel later. We've got work to do."

"Buh?" I articulated grandly, and Future Me chuckled.

"Yeah, she and I came to an understanding," he said flatly. "She stops trying to push her coin on me until _after_ the mess was over, and I let her help me fight off the birth of a new, shitty death-god wannabe." He leaned in on his staff and stage-whispered, "She couldn't help herself from distracting me right near the end, before I could throw my Death Curse, so the enemy won. Again. Maybe if she _doesn't do that_!" he shouted angrily, "The enemy won't _win_ next time!"

"I'm sure that you and I had an understanding," the Fallen Angel wiped invisible dirt from her pristine dress, "but I only have eyes for the two of you that still matter. Get thee behind me, Dresden?" She taunted, and Future Me flinched. I guess he'd used that phrase on her a few times.

I shivered. If she knew even a tenth of what had happened between other versions of herself and me, then I was even more screwed. Just because her coin, the one that contained the _real_ Lasciel, was buried in my basement, didn't mean this one couldn't convince me to "take up her power." Past experience told me that the coins could vanish from inside the best-made magic vaults money could buy if someone cursed with a shadow called out to them.

I made a vow to remind myself as often as possible that the pretty lady planned to eat my soul.

The Fallen turned her attention back to me with a knowing smile. "Just so there are no misunderstandings in the future, I've been helping you along, bit by bit, since you first smelled Brimstone when you cast a spell. That's Hellfire, and the caveman translation is that it supercharges your spells. I've tried helping you in smaller ways before then, especially with your fear of fire, but you've been remarkably stubborn in keeping me out. Or," she smiled winsomely, "you were before you drew on my power."

"I haven't," I denied reflexively. "Whatever you've got, I don't want it."

Future Me raised a hand almost in tandem with my Subconscious, and I glared at both of them as my Subconscious motioned for Future Me to take point.

"Two things," he started off. "First, she _does_ bring Hellfire to the table. That's really not something to turn your nose up at. After things started completely falling apart, I was happier to have it than not. She's got perfect recall and pretty much every language ever hidden somewhere in your head, and she can make your pain go away long enough for you to get the job done when it matters, so keep an open mind even if," he turned back to her, "we're _never taking up the coin_."

He smiled back at me.

"Two," he continued, and then his tone became sheepish. "I know for a fact that I threw a van at Kumori, or, uh, the black robed lady, back at Mortimer's place with a touch of Hellfire. She's fine, by the way, but was peeved when she talked to me at Bock's place. I saw that this time around, Cowl himself showed up. So… yeah. We _did_ use her power. That means the Fallen Angel's here to stay unless we give up magic completely." He sighed, shaking his head, and I agreed with the implication. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, counting up to ten. My Subconscious took the opportunity to mutter something to Future Me, and the harlot in my head tittered. I opened my eyes back up to see that she had altered her clothing into a nun's outfit, and she clasped her hands and bowed to us, the picture of innocence.

Future Me cleared his throat, and I blanched at his eye hanging out of the broken socket, staring at it.

"Yeah, I was _blindsided_ by Quintus _Ass_ ius, because fighting him was an eye opener, and in the end, his final attack was one I didn't see coming," he joked, moving his head and making the eye swing back and forth like a pendulum. I felt a little green, even if I'd just gotten out of a zombie fight. That was _my face_. "Anyway, back to business. As you've already figured out, the Necromancers are cheating with both hands. The problem is, as far as we've gathered, it's somebody on _our_ side who's enabling them, and not on purpose, either. Now, while I need to be more careful with what I share-"

"Wait, why?" I cut in. "If they're cheating, why aren't we cheating right back? In fact, why don't you just-"

"Share everything I know?" Future me cut me off. " _No_." His voice was hard, uncompromising. "I asked the same question, and I'll give you the same answer: that headache you get when the future starts becoming different timelines in the past? If we merge, or something like that, you get that headache for _days_. Even Lasciel there won't be able to keep it fully away. Hell's Bells, even with what little I've shared, as my new friend would say, _you're gonna have a bad time_. How well would you have done against Cowl if you were popping advil like candy? How well do you think you'll do if you need it after this? Worst part is, apparently that version of us died by _overdose_. On pain medication." He gave me as flat a look as he could with his torn up face, crossing his arms. "If I share too much info, you'll get flashes of images and thoughts at random times alongside a massive headache, though maybe not quite as bad as debilitating pain. Just enough that it's likely to screw you up at a key moment; our enemies know about that weakness and are _counting on it_. So I have to ration this stuff, good as it is."

"Can we turn that against them?" I asked, wondering about the poor ass who had died about as proud as Elvis on his toilet. Me. About a version of me, popping pills.

"Tried, failed, apparently it's worse than a waste of time," he sighed. "Lasciel, my version, cut that off as a choice after my own Past Me explained to her how it went wrong. Apparently they're using some kind of dark ritual to sidestep the headaches. You don't want to know the details."

My Subconscious leaned in, eyebrow raised. "Fun as this is, we need to cut a deal with the Angel. Soon. We don't have forever before something wakes us up, and according to A Pirate's Life for Me here, it's harder to contain her from the outside. I can still work on building a cage down here, but you have to decide to put her in it. Or not. If the first taste is free, then you might as well enjoy it."

Future Me lifted his hands and stepped back. "This one's on you two. I learned the hard way that asking my own Future Me to solve the problem can backfire in a don't-you-wish-you-had-the-coin kind of way. I mean, I didn't _take_ it, but still."

I shook my head, then leveled my gaze back at the same face and gentle smile I'd seen before once hidden under a face mask, and once in a bookstore. It seemed genuine, like she really wanted to help me.

I felt again that if she had Future Me to steal ideas off of, however long he'd been here, then I was probably more screwed than I knew.

Before I could open my mouth, a book appeared in her hands. I recognized the designs, but the title had shifted to English: The Song of the Erlking.

"Before we start negotiating, I just wanted to let you know that no matter how things turn out, this is yours whenever you need it," she assured me. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Why would I want that book in the first place?" I demanded, but it was Future Me who cleared his throat. I turned to face him.

"The Necromancers plan to call the Wild Hunt, and if they don't, they'll sucker you into doing it. The ritual to call the Erlking, leader of Wyldfae and the goblin tribes, is in there. If he gets free, he calls the Hunt. Oh, and uh… try not to insult him if you can avoid it. Word is, he takes it personal. That's coming from other versions of _Us_ , so… yeah."

"Thanks," I growled back at her. "A gift to stab myself with."

She just smiled that damned perfect, _knowing_ smile. "You can do whatever you like with it, my host. Just reach into your pocket, and there you'll find it waiting for you."

Her smile didn't change as another book appeared in her grasp. This one made Future Me gasp.

It was apparently titled The Word of Kemmler. I'd never seen it before in my life.

"You shouldn't have that yet," Future Me growled, and I noticed he'd just about called Power into his hands to throw at her.

She chuckled once more. "I shouldn't have the Erlking's song just now, either, but you've been so kind as to provide that, as well. Even if you exist as a buffer against the future, you've brought all kinds of wondrous toys with you."

Future Me exhaled hard, then turned to me. "Don't bargain for that. It's what the Necromancers are here for, what Bob helped create. It's everything you never knew about Necromancy, and if you think you need it, you're probably already screwed."

My Subconscious scoffed. "Just because _you_ were in a bad place and couldn't handle it doesn't mean we'll make the same mistakes."

"And arguing like this is helping no one," I cut off my doppelgangers, then hooked a thumb at the Fallen. "More so in front of _her_. So where is this book in the real world, anyway? Just in case," I motioned Future Me down, but he sighed, then chuckled.

"As far as I know, the Necromancers never found out. It's actually under a desk on the second floor in the Field Museum. I, uh, didn't follow the clues myself, but I was told it was hidden under Sue's skull. The real one. So it's _right there_ if you want to avoid bargaining for a copy. I may not have used it, but... other versions of us did. Seriously, be careful with the Word of Kemmler. It's bad mojo on a different scale. Now... something something Fallen Angel ground rules."

The three of us smiled at Lasciel, the Webweaver, and she smiled back. "Don't worry about me, boys, I'm in no rush."

Something jarred me, making me stumble in the void, and Future Me started panicking. "Hell's Bells, that's _too soon_!" he shouted, looking around frantically. "Uh, quick! We think it might have been Alphys for the time loops," the black void was lighting up to white, "Bob's skull can be remade, _it's safe to trust Sans_ -"

And then I woke up.

* * *

"He's coming around," a voice thundered like Zeus had just heard Hera was divorcing him, and I almost passed out again. I would have loved that, maybe Future Me had more information to share.

My head was _pounding like a rock concert_. Somebody shined the full force of the _entire sun_ directly into my eyes, and I (without shame) screamed like a little girl.

I weakly shoved away at whatever was responsible and I whimpered, trying to curl into a little ball. I felt something fluffy sniff at my face, and then hot, stinky breath filled my nostrils followed by a wet rag on my face. Several times. I loved my dog, but the smell made me want to vomit some more.

"Should we put him back in the circle again?" Somebody female whispered, the sound loud and violent against my migraine, and I briefly wondered if it was Andi. Where had she been during the fight, anyway?

"He was screaming bloody murder even with it up. You think it'll help now?" some other female asked her back.

More than anything else in the world, I wanted to pain to go away.

' _Your wish is my command, my host,_ ' A voice whispered gently into my ear, and then the world dampened down again to something much more manageable.

Part of me wanted to scream that I'd been stupid enough to ask the air for a favor when someone like _her_ was listening, but the rest of me was just glad I wasn't feeling like death warmed over anymore.

"What happened?" I asked nobody in particular. I started trying to push myself up, so Mouse got underneath me and lifted while two pairs of hands pulled me up from under my armpits. I noted the dull feeling telling me that the blood on my face had dried again, minus Mouse's cleaning. "Did we win?"

"Yes, barely," Andi told me, and I looked over and oh she was completely naked. Not hiding it, either. I turned back away as she continued, "Your play with the dinosaur skull worked. The Corpsetaker's neck was broken, but her Ghoul friend almost got her away anyway. Without the zombies distracting us, we kept the pressure on until the both of them were dead. She didn't even manage to release her Death Curse."

"And nobody's acting out of the ordinary?" I asked, looking at the destruction in the museum. "She's called the Corpsetaker for a reason."

"She was unconscious, and we kept our distance," the other woman cut in, and I turned to see that it was the same soldier who had helped run the breach. "Apparently she wasn't expecting her neck to be broken. Too bad for her."

I sighed. "Small miracles. I'll take a lucky break over losing any day of the week."

There were bodies being laid out in the middle of the room, last rites being given, and I walked over to look at the fallen. The corpses, not the Angel, I thought to myself. A faint chuckle sent nasty shivers down my spine. Anyway, they had been laid out, and the zombie-soldiers were being handled more carefully, just in case they were planning to get back up again. They could tell the difference between who was raised and who wasn't by how pale and cold the corpses were.

There were also helpful green flashing arrows over each of the zombies, just in case I'd missed any, until I made a small cut-off motion with a free hand. The illusion vanished with another whisper of female titters, and I resolved to build a cage in my mind for my unwelcome passenger as soon as I could find the time.

Dinosaur Sue's skeleton was actually surprisingly intact. While her fake skull had been melted to slag, I didn't think any real bones were damaged in the fight.

I took a deep breath of coppery air, and looked up at the second floor, where I could picture the faint image of her real skull waiting. It wasn't just my imagination; I could visualize the skull and a few of the surroundings, even if it made my suppressed headache flair up for a moment. Gifts from the Future, I guess.

Too bad he couldn't outright talk to me if I wasn't hanging out with him.

"I have a quick errand to run," I told the two ladies, and maybe my dog. "I just need a moment."

Nobody answered or bothered me as I walked up to the stairs across the battle-worn room, then climbed the staircase.

Sue's skull, her real skull, weighed six hundred pounds, and was set atop a reinforced table next to a desk. The glass case it had been held in was shattered, like all the other glass cases in this part of the museum. I noted the dried, flakey bloodstains around the banisters here, and realized that this was where the zombies had probably dropped down from.

I walked up to the front of the desk, ignoring the slight headache of memory on where the book was hidden underneath, and crouched down, reaching blindly forward to grab it.

"Ow," I pulled my hand back, confused. There were a bunch of little red dots all over my palm and fingers. I crouched further down and tried to look up under the desk, where the book should have been.

Instead of a book, there was a little jet-black metal cylinder with spikes flared out from it.

I looked back down at my hand, where little drops of blood were welling up.

"Empty Night, you told me they _hadn't_ found Kemmler's book," I groaned.

* * *

In hindsight, relying on my Past self for warnings about future threats was stupid. He outright told me that some female Necromancer, Kumori I think, had met him back in Bock's bookstore. If that had changed, then why couldn't they have finally found out where the Word of Kemmler was hidden?

Especially because his warning at the end, _Bob's skull can be remade_ , gave me a good idea on where my spirit of intellect had ended up.

These people weren't stupid. If they were able to send messages to themselves in the past, without suffering the consequences like the rest of us did, then every time I did something different, they'd probably prepare a counter.

That only made me wonder how on Earth they'd figured out where the book was this time, but decided to either wait until now to booby trap it, or why they'd waited until now to grab it. Whatever the answer was didn't bode well for me. More so because I suspected I might be the next Past Me to another Dresden all too soon if I didn't get the right kind of help, and soon.

At my insistence, not wanting to risk the lives of everyone else there by taking out the generators the city was now running on, I wasn't being rushed to the hospital. My magic, and my condition, might have wiped out power to the building. The little metal cylinder, with spikes like a puffer fish, was going in my stead. A hazmat team had come up after I'd explained what had happened to the others (amidst a lot of yelling that aggravated my magical headache), and they were both quick and careful in their removal of the hazard from where anybody else might touch it.

The medical professional the military had lent me had pretty much thrown his hands up in despair, then carefully washed and bandaged my injury, informing me that while it wouldn't help if the magical poison had already spread, at this point he'd consider just cutting my hand off if it meant I would stop doing stupid things. Further, depending on the poison, which we currently knew all of Jack and Squat about other than that nobody could swab samples of it off the cylinder, I might have only have a few minutes or I might die in agonizing pain in a few hours. As I couldn't do a damned thing about either situation, I took his advice to "magic up a cure or start praying" under advisement. That, and to "avoid strenuous activity so it wouldn't spread faster."

Like that was going to happen.

It didn't help that Lasciel had quietly confirmed that there were tons of magical maladies that I might be suffering from, and that her initial "scans" confirmed that an antidote alone wasn't going to be enough no matter what I was suffering from. Of course, that I was still up and moving only meant that it was likely to be really, really bad.

I was sitting on the front steps of the Field Museum, my staff sitting across my knees, and more soldiers were moving around me as they worked to secure the scene. Part of me uncharitably considered them little more than extra pawns that the Necromancers could use in their plans. I quashed the thought, looking back down at my bandaged right hand. The metal pins hadn't really damaged it, except with whatever nasty thing was now working its way through my systems.

Despite my current efforts to picture a cage that might fit an Angel in my mindscape, Lasciel had volunteered to watch my vitals to see what kind of poison it was, and I simply hadn't ordered her not to. I was already dealing with too much to prevent the over-eager Fallen from poking around for my benefit. Her offer of the coin, and all the power and healing that went with it, went both unasked and unanswered. From what little we'd seen of each other, she'd apparently decided to hold off on tempting me until she had a better opportunity. Not that I expected her to miss it when it came, especially when whatever was killing me got worse.

My headache flared up for a moment, and I grimaced. I'd lost my focus on building the cage, and it made me irrationally angry. I forced the emotion down, and started counting prime numbers under my breath while thinking on where my allies were.

Mouse was still inside, offering a fuzzy head to pet to the members of the military who weren't handling things so well. Andi had been talking quietly with Kirby near the military trucks a little bit ago, then the two (at the time, naked) Alphas had retrieved their sweats and headed back inside. I'd learned that the college wolves had snuck up to the second floor with Mouse during the fight, looking for an opening, and that Mouse had apparently jumped down into the fray on the first floor just before he'd started Barking. The Alphas had taken out a few zombies at the start of the ambush, and had probably saved at least a few lives.

Maybe if I'd had one of them with me, they could have seen the spike trap before I'd been caught by it.

"that doesn't look so good," a voice came up behind me, and I swung my staff at him before I knew what was going on. I grunted, the muscles in my right hand complaining much more than usual that I was using them.

The short skeleton was standing in front of me now, further down the staircase, his skeletal grin wide in the noon sunlight. "is that how you greet all your friends, or are you just happy to see me?"

"Stuff it, Napoleon Bone-a-part," I growled, lowering my staff back into my lap and making an effort not to stretch my stiff, bandaged fingers. "Unless you've got some really good news, now's not the time."

Sans' grin fell a little as he looked over at the museum. While the glass doors were somewhat opaque, I didn't doubt he had some idea about what had happened inside. Sure, we got the Copsetaker, _probably_ , but Grevane had gotten away. That meant he was likely building up another army, and we had no idea where he might strike next. Other than the University, which I was informed had the highest concentration of soldiers in the city.

Which might not even slow them down.

"depends on what you consider good news," Sans put his hands back in his pockets. "my brother is enjoying his status as a royal guard, and he's teaching the next generation of monsters about gravity magic. no idea if you'd consider that good news like i do, though."

I looked down at him, standing on a lower step, and I dropped my head into my half-crippled hands, gloved and bandaged both.

I couldn't forget what I'd Seen earlier, and my mouth didn't bother slowing down to ask my brain for permission to speak.

"We found the missing Monsters," I told him. "Their power… their lives were sacrificed into a ritual."

He didn't answer back.

"I'm sorry."

"we found the place where the guy who did it is waiting for us," Sans said quietly. "he's stronger than that should have made him. much stronger."

I looked back down at Sans, at his empty, black eye sockets. Apparently he understood what had happened at Bock's all too well.

"I'm good to go take him down any time, then," I stood tall, taking my staff into my bloodied hand, the bandages no longer stifling the bleeding.

' _Perhaps that isn't the best of choices, my Host,_ ' Lasciel's voice was much less certain than it normally was. ' _I believe I've discovered the roots of the Curse you're now enduring_.'

Sans was staring at my hand.

"What is it?" I asked both of them.

While Lasciel hesitated, Sans didn't.

"why is your soul crumbling to pieces around your right hand?"

I looked at my hand, blood freely dripping from it down my staff.

"uh... are you ok?" Sans asked carefully, staring at my hand. His eye lights had come back on, but his ever-present smile somehow looked ill.

"You know what?" I told him back confidently, flexing my fingers around the blood. "I can't actually feel it hurting. At all. So with all the crap I've had to put up with in the past hour, let alone the past two days… this doesn't even phase me anymore. Any other day, this would sit comfortably at the top of my to-do list and I'd be losing my mind, but today? Just add it to the pile of things I'm gonna have to deal with later."

"yeah, that's sort of a right now problem, not a later problem," Sans cautioned me, looking back up at my eyes. Since we'd had the Soul Gaze, I could meet his without hesitation. "i know some girls who might be able to help, but damage to your soul like that can't wait very long. i can see it eating away at the edges of who you are, weakening you. if it finishes the job… either you'll end up soul-less, or you'll die. couldn't tell you which is more likely."

I could lose my immortal soul because of the Necromancers. Because the Monsters threatening it weren't enough. "Fine," I huffed, annoyed. "How quickly can these girls of yours put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I don't exactly have a couple days to take off."

"there's your good news, then," Sans smiled a little less… frown-ily. "tori is the one who can probably hold you together best while we whip something up on your behalf. she's preparing for the fight we're expecting with the **dirty monster killer**. if you're ready to go, i know a shortcut."

' _If you insist on making my progenitor's coin an absolute last resort,_ ' the peanut gallery offered her unsolicited advice, ' _then this is probably your only other option. I advise going with the skeleton, my host._ '

"Thanks," I answered both of them, one more sincerely than the other, "but shouldn't we bring along backup? Like Mouse, at least?"

"eh... i'm kinda pooped," Sans shrugged. "and we're both in a hurry. normally i'd say to take your time…"

"But today hasn't been a normal day no matter what you're measuring it against," I agreed, unconcerned. "Alright, give me a moment to tell people where we're going."

Sans nodded waving me off.

I stared at him.

"what?"

"Where are we going?" I asked as diplomatically as I could, given how angry I suddenly felt. My hands were twitching, and little shivers that turned to sweat worked their way up my bloodied face. I wiped it away, but that just left more blood from my hand. If I could see my knuckles, they'd be white with how hard I was holding my staff.

Sans blinked. "the graveyard somewhere."

I shook my head, swallowing the desire to bash his stupid head in. "Which. One?"

"graceland cemetery? the guy is waiting near an open grave."

"Oh." I chuckled mirthlessly. "That grave is mine, and he knows we're coming."

Sans nodded slowly, probably trying to figure out if I was joking with him somehow. "just so long as we're all on the same page."

I left him on the stairs, practically skipping with excitement to tell the others.

There were more traps to spring, and the military wasn't going to be happy with me rushing ahead again, but hey. Needs must.

Mouse met me at the door, and I slowed down to give him a huge hug. "Hey, boy," I held him close. "We're going to Graceland Cemetery. My grave. You remember where it is, don't you, boy? Don't you?"

Mouse tried pulling back, and I looked into his eyes, growling at him.

"Fine, be that way. Go, or don't, see if I give a shit."

I shoved past my dog, who quickly scooted out of the way. I was about ready to brain somebody with my staff again, when the bitch of the hour chimed in.

' _While I'm delighted that you're taking your mood swings in stride, my host,_ ' the whore spat poison directly into my brain, ' _Perhaps you should avoid upsetting your allies. You'll be less likely to survive if you do, and then where would we be?_ '

I chuckled, finding the idea a little funny. "Yeah, I probably should. Thanks for letting me know, eh?"

' _Would you like me to help regulate your emotions, my host?_ ' her voice was like a summer breeze in winter, melting away the powdery snowfall. ' _It might help you in the coming hours_.'

I paused, considering it. Something in the back of my mind was screaming at me that this was a bad idea, but the rest of me wasn't sure why.

Still, it would probably help to be cautious… right?

"Uh," I looked around the room, clenching my hands, keeping an eye out as the soldiers, all of them, were moving a bit too carefully, too cleanly, too quietly for the situation. How many of them were really soldiers? "Maybe if you only helped with the negative emotions, or, I mean, if you helped regulate only in the ways that you know I'd know wouldn't have negative consequences on me or take advantage of my compromised position or hurt me, or mess me up in any way?"

' _...under other circumstances,_ ' she said carefully, ' _I'm not sure how well I could abide by that request, but in this instance, losing your soul like this would mean I've failed at my job.'_

As Andi and Kirby approached, slowly, like they'd spook me, I felt the shaking nonsense that had been running through my brain fade away.

I felt like about as dumb as I ever had, turning to a _Fallen Angel_ to regulate my health, but I shoved it down into my overfilling "deal with this later" box.

"Dresden?" Kirby asked carefully (unlike the Fallen, who I realized had remained optimistic and cheerful throughout our conversation, I'd just heard her wrong). "Are you… feeling alright?"

"I wasn't for a moment there," I admitted. "But that was before I realized what the poison was doing to me and started working to fight off the side effects. Mood swings." I didn't bother explaining how I was containing them. "The only people who can help me," I cut to the chase, "are the Monsters. They're preparing an assault against one of the Necromancers, the guy I've been calling Liver Spots, at Graceland Cemetery. Apparently, he's jacked up on Monster dust, so they're being cautious. Unfortunately, I need to move ASAP to meet their healer on site, and my teleporter only takes one passenger, so you'll have to meet me there. I need to go, now, or I'm super dead. Might even come back as a zombie. If that happens, put me down, won't you?"

Lieutenant Tarkin had been coordinating things from the sidelines since the fight, and he apparently overheard me. He'd approached halfway through my quick summary.

"Dresden, are you seriously preparing to jump into an unknown scenario, leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces, _again_?" He asked, his voice level. He didn't sound frustrated, so much as he was apparently just verifying the facts, such as they were.

"Pretty much, yeah, why?"

He shook his head. "I don't suspect I could stop you if I had a tank. I'd offer you a radio if I didn't know you'd fry it. Yes, thank you for informing us lesser mortals what you'll be up to. I'll pass word along, and soldiers will converge on the Graceland as quickly as we can mobilize them. Best of luck."

He turned and walked over to a radio operator set up away from the bodies, having decided he was done with me.

Not that I could blame him, all things considered.

Andi and Kirby were already limbering up. "We're ready to move," Andi assured me.

"Great! Get going, I'll meet you there."

Andi paused in her stretching. "You said your teleporter could take a passenger. Is there some special reason it can't make multiple trips or something?"

"I get that you want to help," I nodded, "but the teleporter is a person, and that person only has enough juice to make the one trip. The plus one on the teleporter is _me_. Seriously, if you want to help, you need to get moving the slow way. I'm dying a gruesome death here. I can't wait up."

Maybe it was an exaggeration, but given who and what we were up against, I suspected it wasn't one. That, and part of me still didn't want to see these kids fighting in the big leagues.

Andi ground her teeth lightly, probably picking up on my ulterior motives, but she nodded at Kirby. The two of them tossed aside their shirts and _leaped_ towards the doors, their sweatpants falling away as they transformed into wolves in the air. I turned to watch Mouse shove open the door for them where he'd been waiting, watching me, and then the three of them were gone.

Sans was at my side. As usual, I hadn't seen him move, but this time I suspect it was because I wasn't paying attention.

He held out his hand.

I took it.

A moment later, I felt the semi-familiar opening of a Way, and he pulled me through it.


	21. Indiana Bones

To understand how impressive Sans was in our short journey through the Ways of the Nevernever, you need to know a few things about what Ways are and what the Nevernever is.

First off, the Nevernever is the supernatural mirror dimension to all of reality. I don't mean all of Planet Earth, I mean _everything, everywhere_. If you know where to go looking, you could find Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, Elysium, and even cheap parking in Chicago, all buried somewhere in the Nevernever. Moreover, it's about as dangerous as walking around on Mars without a space suit if you don't know where you're going. Mars if it were covered in demons who all wanted to eat your face, and where gunpowder doesn't burn.

It doesn't help that while the Mortal Realms, including the Earth, are based on Physics, the rules that dictate how the Nevernever works are more like an ever-shifting system of beliefs. I meant it when I said there are places where gunpowder doesn't burn, or where water _does_. A lot of it doesn't change from day to day or even from decade to decade, but as a sort of mirror to reality, altering what you can find on Earth changes where you'll end up if you cross over to the Nevernever. Wizards can use a spell to open a Way into the Nevernever from just about anywhere; I call my version of the spell _Aparturum_. The thing is, the details of a given place can change dramatically even a short distance away either on Earth or in the Nevernever, so traveling without knowing a stable Way can get a little… complicated. And that's ignoring the dangers.

If I were to open a Way in the meat section of a supermarket in Chicago, I might end up in a regular meeting place of the denizens of the Nevernever, maybe even a more supernatural marketplace's "meat section." If I could avoid being eaten by any of the locals, I might be able to walk down the aisles until I came to another part of that supernatural marketplace. If I were to open a Way _there_ , only a couple yards away by my reckoning, then I might find myself in a bazaar somewhere in Egypt. With only a couple of yards traveled by foot, I could literally step across the globe in a matter of moments.

The catch is, it's entirely possible that the supernatural marketplace I'd opened up a path into might be famous as a place to buy and sell fresh human meat. As a human myself, I would expect my journey to end long before I could open up that second Way into Egypt. For that reason, opening up Ways just anywhere, let alone diving into them headfirst, is generally considered a more complicated form of suicide.

Most Wizards, and even many of the Fae, tend to carefully sift through the Ways near the places they like to go, to see if there are any safe paths (for a given value of "safe") through the Nevernever to get where they're going. These paths are considered worth the weight of their maps in gold. Those maps can last until the mirror reality shifts to compensate for a change in how a place is seen or felt, and when that happens, those Ways cease to be. In Chicago, a natural nexus of the Mortal world, you could get just about anywhere if you knew a safe Way, but jumping through willy nilly was a method of absolute last resort.

Sans didn't give a shit about any of that.

In the back of my mind, I was reminded of my Soul Gaze with Sans, who stood firm against reality itself breaking down, and of all the power he had hidden away. I'd sort of known what he could do, magically speaking, since then, sort of guessed that I could have climbed physically through the paintings of his reality and found myself there, all at once, only a step away from that dust-choked hallway. Thousands of years spent stepping across the Mountain's threshold to the Nevernever, seeing how to cut corners in the most efficient way possible, looking for breaches however small in that Barrier, had made the ability to cross from one side of reality to the other effortless for the skeleton.

That was back down in the Underground, Beneath Mt. Ebott, where his Ways were subtle and perfect, if all completely hamstrung by the Barrier his people had been trapped behind. What he'd apparently gained from his travels was practice. Several millennia of it.

Up here in Chicago, Sans made the Ways his bitch.

I would say we stepped through a Way in the middle of the field museum, but that implies my feet ever touched the ground after we fell through.

Gravity clutched at my insides, and the only way we ever traveled was _down_. It didn't matter that we were flying through the air, flitting into and out of reality at a speed I could barely comprehend, because I was too busy feeling like the wizards in Harry Potter must have whenever they apparated, spun around and drawn ass-first through a sphincter in space between where they _were_ and where they wanted _to be_. I may not have liked those books, but I was now glad I had something, _anything_ to ground myself against while the world spun around me and the direction of _down_ changed from instant to instant.

I think I puked stomach acid and water on a 40-foot-long flying seahorse-bear somewhere along the Way.

All in all, through the flashing lights, freezing and boiling temperatures, gravity shifts in all directions, and me nearly pissing myself, we finally fell through a thin cut in reality and were dropped unceremoniously onto a pile of grass.

Sans managed to land on his feet. I sprawled out face first into the ground, gasping for air.

"sorry about that," Sans muttered to me as he looked around. "i'm still not used to the shortcuts up here. i would have got us here sooner and smoother if we were underground."

I didn't answer him. I was still catching my breath and waiting for my heart to stop pounding.

' _Apologies, my Host,_ ' Lasciel's voice spoke up from somewhere to my left. ' _Be at peace. It will slow the spread of damage to your soul_.'

The world slowed down, just for a moment, then resumed at a normal pace as my heart returned to a more measured beat. The shock of the trip had passed, thanks in part to my Hellish companion. I looked at Sans, who was sweating a little around the bone of his forehead.

I guess if that's how he traveled, terrifying and amazing as it was, it was no wonder he was exhausted just getting around.

"Don't worry about it," I finally answered the skeleton. "Just don't let anybody else know you can do it. There are plenty of things out there that would gladly enslave you and force you to serve them because you can. Nobody can move through the Ways like that. It was fast, sure. Just… warn a guy, next time?"

Sans' eyelights blinked out for a moment, probably over the enslavement comment, but he shrugged it off and kept an eye out.

I finally looked around myself, and cussed like a sailor when I realized that I'd opened the cut on my eye for the thousandth time; it wasn't bleeding very much, considering how often I'd messed it up, but just for a moment, it hurt. The pain passed a second later, and I suspected a certain Fallen was responsible. Ignoring it, I verified that we'd landed in a graveyard.

Graceland Cemetery is famous. It's the largest and oldest graveyard in Chicago, and it's a tourism highlight. It has life-sized replicas of Greek temples and statues, Egyptian obelisks- I mean, there's even a freakin' pyramid. You may not take your wealth with you when you pass, but you can sure spend it leaving a monument before you go.

My grave is here, illegally open to the sky, on permanent standby awaiting my corpse. It was a gift from a Red Court vampire, given just before I'd kickstarted the war in order to save my girlfriend's life. I couldn't see it from here, but the message on my white marble headstone, etched in gold, was unforgettable:

HARRY DRESDEN

HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING

I came here from time to time, as a reminder of what I'd paid, and what I'd lost. What I would eventually pay. It's hard to feel proud or strong in a graveyard, and that goes double when you're standing over your eventual resting place. We aren't immortal. Hell, I'd spoken to the last in a long line of dead versions of me not an hour ago. I was fallible, and if things didn't go right, death was waiting for me, right alongside my gravestone.

If Quintus Cassius had his way, I suspect he was waiting to be my literal grim reaper.

I'm not immortal, but I'm not ready to go just yet, either.

Sans offered me a skeletal hand up, and I took it.

"tori isn't far from here," he told me, all business. "i can't promise she'll be able to put you back together, but she should be able to give you a hand."

"Lead on," I told him, the feelings of nausea fading, and we got moving.

Like I said, Graceland had statues and vanity headstones like you wouldn't believe. It was somewhere between ten o'clock and four in the afternoon, as I'd long since lost track of time, but I couldn't see where exactly the sun was through the various trees and while I was busy watching for threats among the gravestones. Even if I had, I wasn't quite sure which way North was, and wouldn't be until I saw some landmarks I could recognize.

So long as it wasn't night, you could normally find tourists, joggers and mourners in the cemetery, each paying their respects in their own way. With the state of emergency declared, there wasn't a soul in sight.

Graveyards are creepy at night. I could confirm that empty graveyards could be just as creepy during the day, especially when you knew something was hiding in them.

Despite my justified paranoia, we managed to find Toriel, Queen of the Monsters, without finding anyone, or anything, else.

We came up behind her while she kept a lookout toward a landmark I could recognize: my own grave. Her floppy ears twitched as we approached, and she turned just as Sans and I came to a stop. She was either still wearing her purple robe with white accents and a delta rune on the front, or she bought the outfit in bulk. Her stern, almost angry expression melted when she saw us, and she quickly swept us both into a hug.

"Oh, it is good to see you both safe!" she said, engulfing us in her mass. It wasn't that she was fat, just that she was huge. She wasn't taller than me like Asgore, but she was still pretty big. She had leaned down to add Sans to her grip, and I ended up bleeding on her purple robes a little bit.

She drew back and smiled at the both of us, and then her expression hardened again.

"I have kept the _villains_ in my sight," she turned her gaze back toward my grave. "The Necromancer has been pacing, but has otherwise not left that spot."

"And the others?" I asked. "You said villains, plural. I don't see them. Or... anybody else," I said, looking around more carefully. "If we wait a bit, I know that a few friends of mine are on the way, and the military won't be long after."

She looked sidelong at me, then back. "Undyne and Asgore are guarding the mansion. Too many of us have been lost already, and we can't afford to leave our people vulnerable. No other Monsters are ready for this fight."

She motioned forward, then continued, "At least one large snake monster is hiding in your grave. Another two I have seen patrolling, and they have avoided this spot. I suspect they know where I am, and have been humoring me, watching them. None are near, but they are deceptively swift."

"Uh, when you say monsters…" I asked carefully, but she snorted; it was a strange, half-honking chuckle, and I wasn't sure which farm animal it sounded like.

"I suspect the snakes are constructs of magic. None are of our species," she assured me. "You shouldn't hold back against any but their leader, who still retains his SOUL, however broken it has become."

"yeah, alphys and i looked into it, and it turns out we're not covered under your laws of magic," Sans cut in, and I turned to see him… stretching? "i'm not going to say we're all pure joy and goodness, but we're not wired the same way you humans are. that's why i'm going to be killing liver spots while you two help out however you can. the original plan was for the two of you to wear him down and for me to take over, but that was before i realized you were injured."

Toriel looked away from my grave to stare down at Sans, then turned to scrutinize me more closely. I could see sympathy in her eyes as she saw the cuts on my face, the bruises I was covered in, and finally my hand. On seeing it, bloodied and bandaged but still holding my staff, her face morphed into shock and terror.

She hunched over, hands over her mouth, then gently reached toward me like a porcelain doll. "How…?" she asked quietly, and I felt an unnatural surge of euphoria spread like water dripping up my forearm.

' _Apologies, my host_ ,' Lasciel cut in, startling me. ' _Your injury worsens. I will put more effort into reducing the side effects,_ ' she insisted.

Sans must have caught something in my eyes when I'd heard the disembodied voice, because the bones around his eyes shifted in a shrewd way. If I hadn't Gazed him, I would have missed it, and I suspected he only caught whatever he saw because of his side of our Soul Gaze.

I ignored it all.

The strange feelings of joy vanished, along with most of the sensations in my right arm.

Toriel flinched, drawing back.

"How are you still standing...?" she asked, concerned.

"Pure stubborn will," I lied. Sans raised an eyebridge, but I smiled grandly and ignored him. "Speaking of, Sans here said you might be able to help with the whole, 'your soul is literally falling apart' problem I'm dealing with here. Be brutal: will I ever play the guitar again?"

"No," she said bluntly. "Were it not an ongoing effect caused by a magic rooted in your SOUL, you would be lucky to merely lose your arm at the shoulder. As it is…"

Sans cleared his nonexistent throat. "alphys might be able to help back at her lab. can you give him a band-aid for now? liver spots just realized we're here."

Toriel looked torn, looking between my hand and wherever Snakeboy was hiding near my grave. She took my staff from me and handed it to Sans, then engulfed my hand in her massive paws.

"Asgore warned me about your fear of fire," she told me. "For now, it will help us. Draw in your emotions, Wizard Dresden. Feel them all."

And then my world was fire.

I screamed in pain as my hindbrain exploded in terror, signals blaring to run or fight, preferably to run, but Toriel's grip was iron and my left hand was too weak to do anything with. I tried to pull away, feet digging in the dirt, and I only kept from punching or kicking her because I wanted to seize up.

The feeling shifted, all at once, like a burn salve's icy touch fading down to something manageable. I was comfortable then, in her gentle grip, and her fur was soft and her timid smile warm, inviting, the **fire** more that of a hearth than an explosion in a dusty building. If you've ever put aloe vera on a burn, it was kind of like that in reverse.

' _Time grows short, my host_ ,' Lasciel warned me. ' _I am prepared to recover control of your warring emotions as the Monster Queen's spell fades._ '

"If you are injured in the coming fight, reapply your bandages." Toriel looked over her shoulder at a sound in the distance. "I have infused them with healing magic. Prepare yourselves. We have guests."

The sensations all fell away, and the numbness from before fell across my entire body, albeit less absolute. Everything was distant, and my mind was empty of excess.

So there were no distractions from Quintus Cassius' entrance into my view, and I have to say, he had gone downhill since I'd beaten him senseless with a baseball bat.

The first thing I noticed was that he was the size of a troll on steroids, and the second was that his club, something I realized had been meticulously carved from a tree trunk to emulate a Louisville Slugger, was almost as tall as Sans. Even from here, I could see that his movements were still a bit stiff despite his size upgrade, and his sagging face and massive arms were still covered in liver spots.

" **Dresden** ," a voice deeper than I'd remembered rasped. " **You're finally here**. **I was worried your invitation to visit got lost in the mail**."

Snakes, dozens or hundreds of them, slithered into view a fair distance away. Close enough to threaten us, not close enough to strike.

"Sorry, who are you again?" I scratched my head with my gloved left hand, but kept my right ready to swing my staff around to cast with. "I've been dealing with so many of you villains lately, I done plumb forg-"

" **Don't play stupid** , **you ignorant gnat** ," Cassius growled. He lifted the tree trunk like it weighed a tenth as much as actually did, and turned it sideways to reveal the Slugger logos burned into the wood. Like I said, it was a replica somebody had spent far too much time on. " **You know exactly who I am** , **and what you did to me**. **It'll feel nice to repay you the favor again**. **And again**. **And again, for as long as we meet in battle**. **My only regret is that you won't remember the pain** , **but don't worry** … **I have all the time in the world to teach it to you** , **all over again**."

"Oh, come ooooon," I droned, flicking my eyes around to try to find his snakes in the grass. Unprompted, Lasciel's shadow caused several bushes to glow, and the outlines of several long figures to turn red against the grass. I resisted the urge to thank her, or demand she quit helping me. "What, you're just going to skip the part where you reveal your plans and tell me I'll rue the day? This is basic supervillain stuff we're missing out on."

The massive figure laughed maniacally, his arms held back as he shuddered with mirth. I mean, he actually started cackling like a madman. I caught something red and crazed in his eyes as he pointed his bat at me again, and it was about then that I realized something had pushed old Snakeboy over the edge.

" **Oh** , **for all I've come to hate about you** , **you're really a funny guy when you put your mind to it** , **aren't you**?" He put the end of his bat on the ground and leaned over it like a cane. " **I always wondered why you never realized** , **and it took me so long to learn for myself**. **Why is he so weak**? **Why does he keep losing**? **And then I carved you open** , **mulched your bones, and searched your remains** , **and what do I find**?" He smiled. His teeth were huge, and many of them had shattered at some point; I supposed he might have grit them too hard with his new strength. " **Nothing**. **You never took up Lasciel's coin**." His face turned ugly in an instant. " **All the strength of an angel that you could have turned to your own needs** , **and you** _ **threw it away!**_ "

Sans glanced at me, but I shook my head again, just barely. _Not now_.

Sans focused his attention back on Cassius.

" **So you want to know my grand plan**?" He rasped in a faux-sweet voice. " **It's really rather simple**. **The others are going to fight over the power they've been gathering** , **and I'm going to torture you until you take me to Lasciel's coin** , **in bloody payment for the coin of Saluriel that you took from me**. **I'm going to take you out of this city, and I'm going to take**... **my**... **time**. **You're going to beg me to kill you** , **just like Shiro did**."

I flinched.

It was a lie, but it hurt all the same. Shiro was a Knight of the Cross who had been tortured to death in my place. He had been strong, his faith unwavering, even in death.

I took my staff in both hands, completely focused on _destroying this bastard_.

Cassius began laughing again, except this time the red outlines of the snakes had started slowly moving towards us. I broke my focus on the big guy, and I reminded myself that Sans was going to have to land the killing blow. I almost warned him and Toriel about the snakes, but she had clearly turned a little to face one while his hand pointed toward another.

The red outline seemed to turn a dark blue, and the snakes Sans had pointed at stopped moving.

I glanced behind us, but my Lasciel-o-vision didn't pick up on any more threats.

It was around then that Sans, without warning, decided it was a good a time as any to start the fight.

And he sure as hell started the fight.

The snakes he'd been pointing at crunched up and turned to ectoplasmic sludge, which was the only warning Cassius got before Sans' off hand shot out toward the thug. Cassius was slammed into the ground, and a small forest of bleached-white bones shot up from the ground through his insides even as he tried to shove himself back into a standing position; they were streaked with blood. Waves of bones rose from around him in the grass, each five or six feet high, and pushed through his prone form, tearing at him physically and magically as they passed. Sans _lifted_ , and Cassius was thrown into the air, where the bovine skulls I'd seen in our Soul Gaze flashed into existence, their mouths glowing white, and then I saw from the outside what it looks like to be shot with laser beams. Four beams of light as thick as tree trunks tore into him, then four more as the skulls twisted over and under the bewildered hulk, then the skulls morphed together into two massive, twisted forms.

Two final beams tore into Cassius, both bright enough to blind me for a moment, and then I heard a thud as the man crashed back to the ground.

The sound of Sans breathing heavily was loud in the moment of silence that followed.

Quintus Cassius, bloodied and torn, had never dropped his baseball bat. He shoved it into the ground and forced himself into a kneeling position. He roared at us, his teeth bleeding, as he tried to get to his feet.

" _Forzare_!" I yelled, swinging my staff, and a massive fist of force took Cassius under the chin, smashing more of his teeth and flipping him backward and away from us.

"good luck with the snakes," Sans huffed, and then he walked forward to face off against the mutated snake summoner.

A wall of fire bloomed from Toriel's side of the fight, cutting off my response. I'd missed my timing to joke back, so I focused on whittling down the number of slithering threats in the area. There were dozens more than Lasciel had pointed out, and every new one flashed red in my vision. My shield charm would have been useless, the snakes capable of just slithering around it, and we would have been overtaken if I tried to take them out one by one. I wasn't going to fight them one by one, however; I'm not called one of the top 40 strongest wizards in the world because I'm subtle.

"Smagt!" I called out, releasing a burst of raw wind and force. The snakes were too low to the ground for it to hit all of them effectively, and the spell tore up more grass than reptiles. I needed more power, and it didn't help that it felt like my spells were weakening as they passed through my dominant, cursed hand.

I stepped back, toward Toriel and her waves of fire and heat, and I drew on the spike of fear I felt at the proximity through my numbed emotions. The snakes were closing on the three of us, even as another blast of energy and light sounded off from Sans' direction. The ground was shaking, a result of Cassius' massive size and club being put to use.

I needed to change the game, and to do that, I needed to concentrate.

I'm good with wind, force, and fi- and fire. But I knew exactly one spell's worth of Earth magic, too, one Ebenezor had insisted I'd learn. I'd never used it before in battle, and not just because it takes a long time to set up; Earth magic is _not_ my forte.

"Toriel, buy me thirty seconds!" I called out, then did my absolute best not to scream as a tornado of flames twisted around me, nearly burning off my eyebrows, to burn away the snakes that were nearest to me. It swept back and forth, and I stared directly at it as I forced energy into myself, out of my emotions and the heat in the air.

It kept bleeding away, out through my right hand, but after twelve agonizing seconds, I'd managed to prepare the spell faster than I ever had in my life, or ever would again.

"Geodus!" I called to the Earth, and the Earth broke.

A fissure, far larger than I'd intended, split the cemetary between the three of us and my side of the battlefield. Countless charging snakes, too slow to change direction, fell into it. Gravestones and coffins collapsed into the now-open space, crushing a number of the beasts, and the intended effect of giving us breathing room was accomplished, more than I'd hoped for. Toriel's fire tornado also fell into the rift, and a lot of the snakes were cooked when they couldn't flee from it.

Overcharging the spell had also felt like it split my brain, and I fell to the ground with a broken cry.

I twisted, fighting through the pain, trying to rejoin the fight. I managed to turn on my side to see how Toriel was doing.

I shouldn't have bothered. Dozens of balls of fire were shooting from her paws, unerringly striking at things I couldn't even see, and then each fireball bounced from one target to another, all of them hitting at least two targets apiece. Whenever they started really closing in, she threw out waves of fire, scorching the grass. At least three trees around her were also on fire. Even so, she was glancing my way, looking a little startled.

I flopped over to see how Sans was doing.

Cassius was _fast_ , up and swinging his club around so quickly I briefly wondered how it wasn't breaking the sound barrier. He swung it down, took it in both hands and swung it to the side, then kicked out with his oversized foot, practically ignoring the nightmare-hellscape of jagged bones he was standing in as they tore through his massive legs whenever he moved. He drew back his hand and cast it forward, calling spectral and physical snakes to dive forward en masse towards not only Sans, but also Toriel and me, then roared in anger when the lot of them were suddenly slammed into the ground and crushed, the attack wasted.

I tried to get up even as I watched.

Sans was _faster_. He moved faster than my eyes could follow, his manipulations of gravity turned on himself to pull him to the sides, into the air, out of the way, and the damned skeleton had one of his hands in his pocket the whole time! With the other, he shoved Cassius back again, then pulled, dragging his legs out from under him. The battlefield shook, dropping me back to the ground as another forest of bones rose up through Cassius' massive form, but now that I was looking more closely, despite all the blood, it only appeared to be doing superficial damage.

Even so, it was _a lot_ of superficial damage. If Sans could keep it up, Cassius would die the death of a thousand cuts before too much longer. From here, it was only a question of who would fall first: Cassius, who couldn't land a single hit on the skeleton, or Sans, who couldn't seem to just _kill_ the bastard.

I caught Sans' quick glance as I managed to force myself to my feet. His bony face was sweating, a reminder that he'd entered this fight tired.

Hell's bells, if this was him tired, I didn't want to see him fresh.

Something massive burst out of the ground between the three of us, what could only vaguely be called a snake. It was huge, and came up out of the ground a good ten feet with plenty more left hidden from whence it came. It was some amalgam of corpses and body parts, ripped from the graveyard and sewn together with rope and sinew, the mouth formed with hundreds of teeth both human and otherwise. The massive fangs looked like they'd once been elephant tusks, ripped from the jaw of a live elephant and honed into something much sharper.

Sans vanished completely, probably into a Way, and Toriel took great strides to widen the distance as the zombie snake smashed face-first into the ground where she had been standing a moment before.

I, not having much else in the way of choices, rolled myself the short distance into the fissure in the earth I'd made. The lip of the pit was smashed and dust and rocks tumbled in after me.

I couldn't get my shield up in time, but the rocks only hurt like a bitch. They hadn't broken anything.

A moment's panic had me shove myself up, ignoring the pain, as what few small snakes the now-defunct fire tornado hadn't killed rushed over to greet me. With my back to the wall, crumbled as it was, I threw up my left arm as best as I could and drew in any power I could get.

"Riflettum!"

And my magic failed me.

The snakes moved quickly, biting me anywhere they could reach. My duster saved me from the worst of it around my arms and sides as I beat them off with my staff, but my legs were bitten into again and again. Everything was numb, and I felt for a moment that I was going to die.

The world slowed down to a crawl.

' _It need not end this way, my host,'_ Lasciel whispered in my ear. ' _You need only ask, and no matter what distance and protections keep it hidden and safe, my Coin will come to you.'_

"How about you just hold time still like this a little longer?" I grunted back, my mouth not moving, the now-accurate swing of my staff poised to shove half of the snakes off me. The movements it was making were glacially slow to my perception, but with the pain a distant, hazy feeling, I could win this fight. "I'm not going to take up your coin when you can cover me just fine like this."

She sighed, right by my ear, just as my staff hit the closest of the snakes, twisting to strike the next one. ' _If I keep this up without the power of my Coin, it will melt your brain long before the poison of these snakes kills you.'_

"What happened to my magic?" I changed the subject, quickly thinking on whatever else might save me from this mess.

' _The curse from the museum even now takes its toll,'_ she informed me. ' _As you've felt, it saps your strength even as it destroys your soul, a slow, insidious death.'_

She appeared before me, sitting on the head of a snake that was rearing back to bite me again. She pointed down at the bandages on my numb right hand.

' _If you still insist on doing things the hard way, I'm certain there's magic enough in her gift to burn these snakes away.'_ She smiled winsomely at me. ' _Of course, that requires you to actually_ use _fire again. It would be no effort for me to distance your emotional response to the flames, as I've worked to do in the past.'_

"What's the catch?" I demanded, and time was already starting to speed up again; I'd finished striking half the snakes, the rest still focusing on bruising me through my duster with their ineffective bites.

Her smile widened. ' _No catch, not really.'_ She moved closer and leaned in, right next to my face. Her breath was hot on my ear as she whispered, ' _You just have to say thank you.'_

The numbness in my right hand was replaced by the feelings of warmth and comfort Toriel had infused into my bandages. Rather than re-apply them to stave off the wounds I'd taken, I drew the energy in to cast a spell I'd been avoiding for quite some time.

" _ **FUEGO!**_ " I shouted, and flames burst out from me like an explosion, engulfing the pit and turning the snakes to ash. I gasped as time returned to normal speeds, my head swimming and limbs aching, and I freaked out for a moment when I couldn't move, fearing that the snakes' venom had paralyzed me. When I saw my staff swinging around, I blinked trying to process it.

Had… had I just given myself third degree burns over my entire body?

No, I couldn't have, my duster would have protected my back and I couldn't feel it, either.

Like the million other times I'd done it today, I put the problem aside as best I could and soldiered on. I planted my staff next to me and pushed myself up against the wall. I was fighting a total lack of equilibrium, and it didn't help that I couldn't feel where I was putting my feet. I managed to stand, finally, and looked around to see that Lasciel was sitting on nothing in the air wearing a fine white dress, filing away at her nails.

She raised an eyebrow at me with a smirk.

' _Well?'_ she asked. ' _I'm waiting_.'

I didn't get it at first, but then I thought over the deal we'd made.

"Thank you, Lasciel," I told her, doing my best to bury any emotional attachment to the words.

She smiled at me again, then waved her hand and disappeared.

The sensations in my body returned, allowing me to move again.

It was just in time to feel the pit shake as something huge crashed into the ground.

While I'd torn the Earth asunder in a sort of line, completely unlike the circular hold I'd been going for, the ledges were about five feet higher than I'd intended for them to be. I hadn't meant to do much, just to leave a divot the snakes would be slowed down by. If it weren't for the huge zombie snake's attack on the side of the pit, I might have been stuck.

I carefully climbed back up the short distance to near ground level. Ground zero, I amended, taking in the destruction the fight had caused as I lay half-out of the pit. Toriel's areas were no longer on fire, but that was because there was little left that could still burn; the three trees' leaves were ash, and the trunks were blackened. Sans' bone killing fields had torn up the ground and splattered it in more blood than I would have thought Cassius' oversized form could hold. My own contributions had left a scar on the land, carving through several of the artistic legacies of the dead. All around, there were blasted holes, places something had burst out of the ground.

The ground shook as the zombie snake did precisely that, then shot forward to bite at one of the burned trees. Toriel jumped back from behind it as the snake ripped the tree in half, the charcoal-wood exploding into pieces. She threw fire at the abomination, and it dodged and dropped underground once more. More fire followed it down into the hole, for all the good it did.

"Level with me," I told the Fallen, resigned to needing her help no matter how much I hated it. "What would it take to blast that thing to pieces?"

Lasciel appeared, laying down outside the pit in a yellow sundress, holding the Word of Kemmler. She idly turned one of its pages. ' _You're thinking like a caveman,'_ she admonished me, not looking up from the book. ' _Would it not be easier to draw away the Necromantic energies from the Serpent?'_

"Not to argue a fine point, but I have no idea how to do that and can't learn fast enough for it to matter," I growled back. "What can I do to help her _now_?"

Lasciel reached out to put a gentle hand on my face, and I only couldn't pull away because if I did, I would have fallen back in the pit. ' _Silly mortal man, it is not beyond_ -'

Whatever she was planning to say was interrupted by Sans and Cassius falling sideways, parallel to the ground, right past me. The Serpent burst forth again, and Sans instantly altered course for Cassius to smash into it at terminal velocity, slamming both of them into the ground in a dark blue haze. Toriel reached outward, and threw fire not only at the pair of them, but also into all the holes the Serpent had made so far. Fire erupted _inside_ the beast, coming up from below, as Sans landed next to her. Both his hands shot forward, and the air filled with dozens of thinner, sleeker bovine skulls. They glowed, then fired one after another, each disappearing after delivering its Monstrous payload and even more flashing to life as they pounded Cassius and his Serpent into the ground, the light carrying enough force and energy to feel it from where I was hiding.

The last of the beams fired as Toriel finished preparing some sort of finisher of her own, and she held out her hands and bathed the fallen pair in a torrent of melting flames.

I dropped into the pit as the heat washed over me, followed by excess jets of fire.

Some other, final explosion lit up the afternoon sky, and then the graveyard was quiet.

I waited a few moments, just in case, then poked my head up again to see what, if anything, was left.

The Serpent had been destroyed completely. Cassius, his body half melted and a number of his bones open to the air, was trying to push himself up one final time. Sans was half collapsed against Toriel, who was the only one here who didn't look totally exhausted, the tears on her dress notwithstanding.

Cassius shuddered, then spoke.

His voice was deep, so deep I couldn't understand what he said, but whatever spell he cast fell on me like a suffocating miasma of death and decay.

He collapsed on the ground, dead.

A Death Curse. He'd somehow managed to pull one off, even as broken as he was.

Whatever curse he'd cast on us, it didn't stop me from climbing out of the pit and stumbling over to the others, giving the Serpent and Cassius a wide berth.

"Hey," I told them, glancing around at the total destruction of the nearby cemetery.

"hey," Sans said back, the bones of his eyes seeming to droop. He looked like he was about to pass out on his feet.

I guess I sort of felt the same way.

Toriel looked between the two of us and sighed, deeply.

"Our fight with the Necromancers is not yet over," she reminded us. "Not by far."

"Yeah, but we'll get 'em," I said back, leaning lightly on my staff. "We always do."

"do we?" Sans asked. "doesn't always feel like it. doesn't feel like victory."

I looked down at the remains of the Snakeboy and his snake. I thought back to the room, where they'd sacrificed dozens or hundreds of Monsters to turn him into the mad thing he'd become. "No, it doesn't," I sighed, blinking heavily. "Still gotta try to stop them, because failure's a lot worse."

Sans shook his head a bit, swaying on his feet.

Of the two of us, I like to think he collapsed first.

My magic had failed me, and whatever healing spell Toriel had used on me was far past spent. I just wanted to rest.

There would be time for that when I was dead.

A small part of my brain told me I might not have to wait all that long for that.

I didn't pass out when I hit the ground, as I'd done so often over the past few days. I was still vaguely aware when Toriel flipped me over so I wouldn't suffocate against the dirt, and I felt some faint tingles when she used whatever magic she had left to treat me and Sans. Everything was foggy, distant, but I was still sort of in and out.

I don't know exactly how long it took for anybody else to arrive, what with how busy I was dying on the ground, but I noted that for all it was, this kind of death was really, really boring. Even the pain seemed too distant to matter. Somebody lifted me onto a stretcher, and there was a short argument I managed to overhear about how a hospital wouldn't help me.

I was loaded into the back of a minivan, of all things.

It wasn't until we'd been driving for a while, me blearily watching the swaying of the ceiling as the van puttered along, that I finally closed my eyes. I was sure it would only be for a short nap.


End file.
